Mumbai's Aarey Milk Colony is home to 4 new species of spiders!

If you thought tarantulas were the stuff that Hollywood horror flicks are spun of then wildlife researchers Zeeshan Mirza and Rajesh Sanap will tell you these hide right in your backyard Between June and October in 2009 the Marol boys were surveying Goregaonrsquos Aarey Milk Colony when they spotted a shallow burrow under a rotting log in the premises of a private estate Hinged to the burrow was a Dshaped door made of a thin layer of cobwebs Inside sat a female Haplocastus validus measuring almost three centimetersZeeshan Mirza and Rajesh Sanap discovered the Thrigmopoeus psychedelicus in KeralaThe creature is commonly called the robust trapdoor tarantula and is a notsocommon find The robust trapdoor spider was last chanced upon in 1899 by men laying railway tracks in Matheran A specimen was sent to British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock who worked at Londonrsquos Museum of Natural History That was the last it was heard of The ldquorediscoveryrdquo of the megaspider by 28yearolds Mirza and Sanap who now research at Bengalurursquos National Centre for Biological Sciences was an important turn in the nationrsquos arachnid researchThe Heterophrictus aareyensis was named after Aarey Colony where it was discoveredIn the last one year 176 species of animals have been discovered across India reports the Zoological Survey of India In Mumbai four new species of spiders have been discovered in the last two years just when you thought this concrete jungle had nothing more to offer And the resurgence in Indian research has come with technology connectivity and conservationldquoPeople think taxonomy is not a science but the art of comparison Today taxonomy is coupled with hard sciencerdquo says Mirza Pocockrsquos taxonomical descriptions were about five sentences long with handdrawn diagrams The average description these days is about six pages long replete with hiresolution images made under highzoom stereomicroscopes with maps and statistics Itrsquos trendy and necessary to be a taxonomist these daysEurope is just a click awayProfessor Hemant Ghate retired from Punersquos Modern College three years ago has worked in the field for 40 years The zoologist says the major change has come with computers and the Internet which has given researchers access to specimens in the form of digitized archives The two things that are crucial for taxonomy he says are specimens and literatureHis coresearcher 24yearold Siddharth Kulkarni says ldquoBack then literature used to come by ship Now itrsquos just a click away Many Indian specimens collected by European zoologists are housed in museums abroad Itrsquos great that these institutions have opened up their digital repositoryrdquoKulkarni is a coordinator for the website World Spider Catalog which gives access to some of the earliest publications on arachnids dating to the mid 1700s The hitch in Indiarsquos tryst with taxonomy he says is its relatively recent entry into the world of speciesfinding and categorisation as work by Indians has taken off mostly postIndependence Rahul Khot curator for the Bombay Natural History Society BNHS says ldquoWith advancement in technology researchers are able to correct misidentified species solve some mysteries and understand Indiarsquos natural diversityrdquoIn 2009 Siddharth Kulkarni posted a picture of an Indian black widow on Orkut above centre different from its Australian counterpartSocial media to the rescueThe digitizing of specimens and descriptions is an important step to the democratisation of scientific information And it need not always be in the manner of academic volumes A free Android app called Frog Find is an extension of a wellknown book by batrachologist Dr Gururaja KV Mirza runs a Facebook page called Scorpions of India and is developing a scorpionlocating app The BNHS will soon digitise its collection of 120000 specimens of Indian fauna of which 400 are arachnids for public accessThen there are the things that people frivolously share mdash a funny video of the mating ritual of jumping spiders that looks like a flamenco dance movement ldquoApps and social media help us talk to each other about sightings These conversations are important in a country with diverse species It is easy for people to think they have spotted a new species and conversely to miss out on a new onerdquo says MirzaRahul KhotKulkarni will vouch for this In 2009 he had found a rather curious spider with a red stripe running across its abdomen in Lonand Satara district He posted a photograph of the unusual spider on Orkut and was astounded to hear from an Australian on the social network that it looked like a black widow from his continentThe DNA nameKulkarni studied the Indian black widow at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands and observed that its stripe is structurally different from that of its Australian counterpart Research is on to confirm if itrsquos a new specie Itrsquos currently known only by its genus name mdash Latrodectus However Prof Ghate says ldquoWe name our insects just like we name our children Once the DNA barcoding has been done for a specie even finding just the leg of a spider is now enough to understand its DNA and ascertain if its a new specie or notrdquo Molecular sequencing which when coupled with classical taxonomy transforms the art into a scienceSpidey saves the dayThrough a researchers networking group Kulkarni was introduced to members of the Thomisidae family at Kaas plateau Their specialty mdash mimicking the flowers they inhabit and ambushing unaware prey ldquoFlower spiders have camouflaging techniques and look beautiful They draw a lot of funding just like butterfliesrdquo he saysThe Renaissance in Indian arachnid taxonomy is more than just about the fancy tech ldquoNew discoveries are the result of conservation action Researchers are actively seeking out endangered species and garnering funding to further their studiesrdquo says Khot The data collected from Aarey he says can change the conversation about the space and stop devastating infrastructure projects in that area A little spider it seems can just be what Aarey needs