To understand them better, the team is now measuring how the activity of genes involved in the circadian clock changes throughout the day. 3.35K subscribers Subscribe 4.4K views 8 months ago spider huntsmanspider arachnophobia Huntsman spider also called clock spider belongs to the family of Sparassidae. Whether the spiders pay a cost for their dissonant clocks is unknown. In humans, chronic mismatches in circadian rhythm have been linked to many conditions, from cancer to depression. “Shorter periods are great for getting up earlier for early food sources and if food comes out right at dawn, it is likely important to get up early enough to build a fantastic web,” says Sigrid Veasey of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. ![]() That suggests that in the wild, the late afternoon daylight suppresses their activity and resets that burst of activity to coincide with sundown. When they are kept in darkness, the spiders’ free-running clocks cue them to become active a few hours before nightfall would normally occur. When nightfall comes, the spiders burst into activity, looking for prey and building their webs. The shorter circadian rhythm may be an adaptation that allowed them to weave their webs before dawn, avoiding being eaten by birds or other predators. The findings were presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC, this week.ĭuring the day, the spider sits still on its web – a strategy to remain as inconspicuous as possible to predators. The normal selective pressures that maintain 24-hour circadian rhythms in most species have loosened in these spiders, says Moore. ![]() They found that the spiders were able to adjust within 24 hours, where other animals would be jetlagged and out of sync for about a week. Then the team conducted shift experiments, advancing or delaying daylight by 6 hours. “We’ve never seen a circadian clock remotely like this,” said Natalia Toporikova of Washington and Lee University, who was part of the study. The term ‘clock spider’ is now used in reference to any spider, large or small, found behind wall clocks. He also identified two species that have exceptionally slow clocks, averaging 28.2 and 28.5 hours respectively, and one species that is completely arrhythmic - without an internal clock at all. Moore found that three of the species had biological clocks averaging just 17,4, 18.5, and 19 hours.
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