Comment on electrostatic spider flight

Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Is this study (afaik published in 2018, but the paper is dated or was amended in 2020?) distinct from the others? I’m guessing they detailed the “electric” part better?

It is observed in many species of spiders, such as Erigone atra, Cyclosa turbinata, as well as in spider mites (Tetranychidae) and in 31 species of lepidoptera, distributed in 8 suborders. Bell and his colleagues put forward the hypothesis that ballooning first appeared in the Cretaceous. A 5-year-long research study in the 1920s–1930s revealed that 1 in every 17 invertebrates caught mid-air is a spider. Out of 28,739 specimens, 1,401 turned out to be spiders.

Although this phenomenon has been known since the time of Aristotle, the first precise observations were published by the arachnologist John Blackwall in 1827. Several studies have since made it possible to analyze this behavior. One of the most important and extensive studies exploring ballooning was funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture and performed between 1926 and 1931 by a group of scientists. The findings were published in 1939 in a 155-page bulletin compiled by P. A. Glick.

wiki/Ballooning_(spider)

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