SPIDERS are not known for their caring, sharing nature. Unlike social insects, it is rare for arachnids to live in cooperative groups. Now a colonial species of spider has been discovered that uses group tactics to hunt.
Leticia Avilés and colleagues from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, discovered the spider, Theridion nigroannulatum (pictured above guarding egg sacs), in rainforest in eastern Ecuador. The spiders, which live in nests that house up to several thousand individuals, hunt by hanging sticky silk threads from low-lying leaves. When an insect blunders into the silk, a group of spiders drop…
