Harvard research examines colorful spiders
There is plenty that’s striking about Phoroncidia rubroargentea, starting with size — at just 3 millimeters, the spiders are barely larger than a few grains of salt. But the reason the Madagascar species grabbed Sarah Kariko’s attention had more to do with their color. Unlike many other species, which gradually lose their color when preserved in ethanol, the spiders dazzled with shimmering red and silver, even after decades of preservation. “I was sorting through specimens from my expeditions to Madagascar and these little red spiders kept catching my eye,” Kariko said. “I asked a colleague, ‘Have you ever seen this before?’ When I started going through the same spider species on the shelves in the collection and then began examining specimens from other museums they looked like this, too, so I started asking: How is this happening? What is going on here?” Those questions were the start of a journey that would lead Kariko...