Spiders and Ticks News

November 22, 2024

Top Headlines

Fossil Hunters Strike Gold With New Species

Oct. 29, 2024 — Paleontologists have identified fossils of an ancient species of bug that spent the past 450 million years covered in fool's gold in central New York. The new species, Lomankus edgecombei, is a distant relative of modern-day horseshoe crabs, ...

Lyme Borreliosis: New Approach for Developing Targeted Therapy

Oct. 23, 2024 — Lyme borreliosis is the most common tick-borne infectious disease in Europe. Up to 70,000 new cases are estimated each year in Austria alone. The bacterial infection can cause lasting health problems for patients. A research team has made ...

Rates of a Tick-Borne Parasitic Disease Are on the Rise

Oct. 8, 2024 — Rates of babesiosis, a tick-borne parasitic disease, increased an average of 9% per year in the United States between 2015 and 2022 and four in 10 patients were found to be co-infected with another tick-borne illness such as Lyme disease, according ...

Dogs Contaminate Ponds With Parasite Medications

Oct. 8, 2024 — Most dog owners didn't know that flea and tick treatments are dangerous to aquatic life, suggesting more awareness could ease the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:17pm EST

Spinning out a New Biomaterials Startup Is Harder Than You Think

Oct. 2, 2024 — Spider silk, long prized for its strength and elasticity, has created something of a furor in the biomanufacturing world as businesses look for ways to cheaply scale up production for silks, which ...

Spinning Artificial Spider Silk Into Next-Generation Medical Materials

Sep. 24, 2024 — It's almost time to dust off the Halloween decorations and adorn the house with all manner of spooky things, including the classic polyester spider webs. Scientists have made their own version of ...

Ancient Gene Gives Spiders Their Narrow Waist

Aug. 29, 2024 — An ancient gene is crucial for the development of the distinctive waist that divides the spider body plan in two, according to a new ...

Tarantulas Have Surprising Partnerships With Other Species and Their Hairiness May Be a Defense Mechanism

Aug. 22, 2024 — A new study reveals that tarantulas are often on friendly terms with amphibians, reptiles, and even army ants, which are known to feed on spiders. ...

Will Climate Change Lead to the Extinction of a Newly Discovered Tarantula Species?

Aug. 19, 2024 — Biologists have discovered a new species of tarantula from the Madrean Sky Island biodiversity hotspot in southeastern Arizona. This remarkable new ...

Spider Exploits Firefly's Flashing Signals to Lure More Prey

Aug. 19, 2024 — Fireflies rely on flashing signals to communicate to other fireflies using light-emitting lanterns on their abdomens. In fireflies of the species Abscondita terminalis, males make multi-pulse flashes ...

Scientists Map DNA of Lyme Disease Bacteria

Aug. 15, 2024 — Researchers have produced a genetic analysis of Lyme disease bacteria that may pave the way for improved diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the tick-borne ...

Spider Silk Sound System

May 16, 2024 — Researchers have investigated how spiders listen to their environments through webs and found that the webs match the acoustic particle velocity for a wide range of sound frequencies. Playing sound ...

Ancient Arachnid from Coal Forests of America Stands out for Its Spiny Legs

May 17, 2024 — The spiny legged 308-million-year-old arachnid Douglassarachne acanthopoda was discovered the famous Mazon Creek ...

Plants Utilize Drought Stress Hormone to Block Snacking Spider Mites

May 3, 2024 — Recent findings that plants employ a drought-survival mechanism to also defend against nutrient-sucking pests could inform future crop breeding programs aimed at achieving better broadscale pest ...

How the Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus Enters Our Cells

Mar. 28, 2024 — Researchers have identified how the tick-borne Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells. The results are an important step in the development of drugs against the deadly ...

New Testing Approach Improves Detection of Rare but Emerging Powassan Virus Spread by Deer Ticks

Mar. 26, 2024 — Researchers have come up with a new, more accurate method for detecting in ticks the emerging Powassan virus, which can cause life-threatening neuroinvasive disease, including encephalitis and ...

Research Uncovers a Rare Resin Fossil Find: A Spider That Aspires to Be an Ant

Mar. 22, 2024 — Spiders that disguise themselves as ants live in many locations around the globe but until now most had been able to avoid detection from fossil researchers as well as ...

Experts Warn Climate Change Will Fuel Spread of Infectious Diseases

Mar. 20, 2024 — Infectious diseases specialists call the medical field to be ready to deal with the impact of climate change on spreading diseases, such as malaria, Valley fever, E. coli and Lyme ...

A Protein Found in Human Sweat May Protect Against Lyme Disease

Mar. 19, 2024 — Human sweat contains a protein that may protect against Lyme disease. About one-third of the population carries a genetic variant of this protein that is associated with Lyme disease in genome-wide ...

Giant Antarctic Sea Spiders Reproductive Mystery Solved

Feb. 18, 2024 — Instead of carrying the babies until they hatched, as in most species of sea spiders, one parent (likely the father) spent two days attaching the eggs to the rocky bottom where they developed for ...

Joro Spiders Well-Poised to Populate Cities

Feb. 13, 2024 — The Joro spider was first spotted stateside around 2013 and has since been spotted across Georgia and the Southeast. New research has found more clues as to why the spider has been so successful in ...

Rain Can Spoil a Wolf Spider's Day, Too

Jan. 17, 2024 — Researchers found that wolf spiders can't signal others or perceive danger from predators as easily on rain-soaked leaves compared to dry ones. Even communicating with would-be mates is harder ...

Spider Venom Heart Drug a Step Closer

Jan. 17, 2024 — A molecule sourced from funnel web spider venom shows promise as a safe and effective future drug for heart ...

Microbial Awakening Restructures High-Latitude Food Webs as Permafrost Thaws

Jan. 3, 2024 — Wildlife biologists used a novel technique to trace the movement of carbon through Arctic and boreal forest food webs and found that climate warming resulted in a shift from plant-based food webs to ...

New Insights Into Zebra Mussel Attachment Fibers Offer Potential Solutions to Combat Invasive Species, Develop Sustainable Materials

Dec. 8, 2023 — A recent study has revealed that an unlikely event, occurring over 12 million years ago played an important role in shaping one of Canada's most damaging invasive species. Zebra and quagga ...

Suburban Backyard Home to More Than 1,000 Species

Dec. 8, 2023 — A challenge among three housemates to identify species around their inner-Brisbane home has resulted in an academic research paper, showcasing the rich biodiversity in urban landscapes. ...

An Exotic Tick That Can Kill Cattle Is Spreading Across Ohio

Nov. 3, 2023 — A species of exotic tick arrived in Ohio in 2021 in such huge numbers that their feeding frenzy on a southeastern farm left three cattle dead of what researchers believe was severe blood loss. The ...

Racing to Defuse a 'Ticking' Public Health Time Bomb

Oct. 18, 2023 — The explosive rise in tick-borne diseases in many parts of the United States over the last five decades represents a major public health threat that demands innovative solutions, warns a group of ...

Tropical Ecosystems More Reliant on Emerging Aquatic Insects, Study Finds, Potentially Putting Them at Greater Risk

Oct. 9, 2023 — Researchers have found that tropical forest ecosystems are more reliant on aquatic insects than temperate forest ecosystems, making them more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and ...

Spider Silk Is Spun by Silkworms for the First Time, Offering a Green Alternative to Synthetic Fibers

Sep. 20, 2023 — Scientists have synthesized spider silk from genetically modified silkworms, producing fibers six times tougher than the Kevlar used in bulletproof vests. The study is the first to successfully ...

Some Spiders Can Transfer Mercury Contamination to Land Animals

Sep. 13, 2023 — Sitting calmly in their webs, many spiders wait for prey to come to them. Arachnids along lakes and rivers eat aquatic insects, such as dragonflies. But, when these insects live in ...

The Modern Sea Spider Had Started to Diversify by the Jurassic, Study Finds

Aug. 17, 2023 — An extremely rare collection of 160-million-year-old sea spider fossils from Southern France are closely related to living species, unlike older fossils of their ...

Research Points to Potential New Medical Therapy for Lyme Disease

July 28, 2023 — A medical therapy that inhibits the growth of cancer cells may one day be effective at treating Lyme disease, according to new research ...

From Down Under to Underground: Surprising Daddy Long-Legs Spiders Discovered in Australia and Réunion

July 28, 2023 — A new spider species, a blind daddy long-legs, has been discovered in boreholes in Australia's Pilbara region. In addition, a new-to-science daddy long-legs species was found on R union island, ...