By Krisha Bansal
China, Sep 16: Recently three researchers from the Capital Normal University in China have found a mother spider protecting her offsprings from a fossil sample. They have found in a mine in Myanmar, four bits of amber (tree gum) with embedded mother spider and egg sac intact under its body. The spider belongs to the extinct Lagonomegopidae family, which are characterised with large eyes. It was living around 99 million years ago. A closer look showed that the mother had used her own silk threads to tie the eggs together. In one of the amber they found interwoven small pieces of waste, which might have been a part of the nest suggesting that the hatchlings stayed with their mother after hatching. This is early evidence of maternal care in spiders.
Image Credits: Xiangbo Guo et al./rspb.2021