Arachnid alert: Last seen 122 years ago in Burma, rare jumping spider makes an appearance in Mumbai!

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

New Delhi: Spiders are known as one of the most prolific predators on the planet, surpassing the likes of humans and whales.

Well, another arachnid predator species, that was last seen 122 years ago in Burma (now Myanmar), has been spotted again, this time in Mumbai.

A male Piranthus decorus – also called the jumping spider – was photographed by wildlife photographer Rajesh Sanap in 2015 in Mumbai's Aarey Milk Colony, without realizing that it was a rare species.

However, during surveys conducted in 2016, a female spider of the same species was discovered in the same locality, thus confirming that it was the Piranthus decorus, that was last found in 1895 in Burma.

The results have been accepted for publication in Acta Arachnologica, a Japanese journal of Arachnology (study of spiders) and will be published in the August issue of the journal, the Hindustan Times (HT) reported.

Jumping spiders form 13% of the global spider diversity and family Salticidae, under which they are classified, is the largest family of spiders.

According to the HT report, the spiders rediscovered from Mumbai are found in tree trunks. The presence of the species in Mumbai was confirmed in a study carried out at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, by John Caleb, PhD in arachnology from the Madras Christian College and currently working at the Zoological Survey of India, and Sanap.

Caleb pointed out that spiders are one of the most diverse predators. “They constitute a major component of the terrestrial ecosystems and help regulate the insect populations. Recently, research on spiders in India is gaining momentum, owing to the use of spiders as bio-control agents in pest management programs,” he said, HT further reported.