Bliss of the Spiderwoman

Cannibalism amongst one of earth’s most reviled creatures is hardly surprising, but new research at ANU has uncovered a more tender side to spiders.

The words spider and cute rarely appear in the same sentence, but in conversation with Amber Beavis they coincide with striking frequency.

Dubbed ‘Spidergirl’ by her friends, and failing miserably to keep to her New Year’s resolution not to mention arachnids in social situations, her research has provided new insights into the lives of eight-legged subjects.

Ms Beavis (right), a PhD candidate in the ANU School of Botany and Zoology, has found that cannibalistic huntsman spiders will happily feast on their kind, but draw the line at eating family or baby spiders.

The spiders in her latest study were Delena cancerides, a species of tree-dwelling huntsman, which she describes as “fluffier” than the ones Australians find in their homes. They are social spiders that live in colonies, tolerating members of their group, but behaving aggressively towards outsiders.

This species is a favourite among filmmakers and has starred in films such as Spiderman and Lord of the Rings — Ms Beavis says she would consider a career as a movie spider wrangler “if academia doesn’t work out”.

Ms Beavis’ research first set out to prove that Delena cancerides could recognise their kin. She found the spiders were willing to eat other spiders from their species that were not from their colony, but chose starvation over making a meal of a relative.

Her next step was to find to what extent outsiders would be tolerated. To her surprise, Ms Beavis found that this species of huntsman would rather starve to death than eat spiders below a certain threshold size. To conduct the experiment she put an adult Delena cancerides together with a spider that she could be certain was not its kin, but with no other source of food, to see if it would resort to cannibalism. The adult would only eat its companion if it were over a certain size.

“One of the cutest things I found was when doing this experiment,” she says.

“I had a large female spider and I would introduce a small spider that couldn’t possibly be related. It wouldn’t eat it, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t try to eat it.

“It would pull it towards its fangs, but the little spider would tap it and it would change its mind and let it go.

“After the experiment I gave them some food. The adult spider had a cricket’s leg in its mouth and the baby came and grabbed it. There was a short tug of war, then the adult just gave it the leg.”

This finding helped solve another mystery that has long surrounded Delena cancerides — it is far less inbred than other species of social spider.

Ms Beavis’s research indicates the new blood comes from young spiders — usually devoured in colonies of other social spider species — successfully introducing themselves to a colony and mating.

Originally a classics scholar, Ms Beavis was only a couple of weeks into her double degree at ANU when a lecture from the biology component got her hooked on invertebrates.

Having completed that degree, she went onto honours and now PhD studies focusing on creatures that many of us go out of our way to avoid — an impulse she herself has had to overcome.

“When I first started it was hard to stop myself squealing — often I’d have to go and work in another room.”

Her next project is one of the first studies of the behaviour of funnel web spiders (left). She plans to tag two breeds of funnel web in woodland at Captain’s Flat, east of Canberra, and monitor where and how far they travel.

Although she has never been bitten by a huntsman, Ms Beavis recognises the dangers are more significant when handling their lethal cousins.

“No one here has ever come close to getting bittenby a funnel web, but if you do you’ve only got an hour before you get really sick.”

To tag the spiders she plans to coax them into glass jars “large enough to keep your hands away” before using a dose of carbon dioxide to slow them down.

The spiders cannot climb slippery glass, so can be dealt with in relative safety if they are at the bottom of a narrow glass jar, with little room to move. A chip is then glued to the spider’s back using tweezers.

The research team behind the project does not use gloves as these offer little protection from a funnel web’s fangs and impede the researchers’ dexterity. The best protection is caution and experience, Ms Beavis says.

“Their behaviour is very predictable: they might look like they are going to bite, but they rarely strike. It’s all for show.

“I’ve already started referring to them as cute.”