Tarantulas know how to fight. Many of these arachnids defend themselves by launching javelin-like hairs from their abdomens at potential attackers. But a newly discovered member of this family prefers to settle its confrontations up close.
This is Kankuamo marquezi, and it jabs its butt bristles, or urticating hairs, straight into its foes.
“Urticating hairs are used as defense against natural enemies,”Carlos Perafán, a biologist from the University of the Republic in Uruguay, said in an email. “These hairs are different from hairs covering the body of tarantulas because they have a penetrating tip, which allows the hair to embed in the skin or mucous membranes and cause irritation.”
Scientists had previously identified six types of urticating hairs on tarantulas. Kankuamo marquezi adds a seventh. Its hairs are the second example of a defensive hair that is released on contact, while most are projected when a tarantula flicks its legs against its rear, sending a flurry of barbs into the air.
Kankuamo marquezi’s derrière defenses are different enough that they not only classify the spider as a new species of tarantula, but also a new genus as well, which is the next classification up in taxonomy. Mr. Perafán said the discovery raises questions about the evolutionary pressures that caused the spiders to develop their rear-end spikes.
He and his colleagues found the new arachnid while exploring the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in Colombia. They described it in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Zoo Keys
They named the species after Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel-prize winning author of the book "One Hundred Years of Solitude” who lived in Colombia, and its genus after the Kankuamo, which are indigenous people who inhabited the eastern slopes of the mountain range where the tarantula was found.
