Tiny Spider Appears to Have Sailed Across an Entire Ocean. Spiders in the family Migidae don’t get out much. Known as “tree trapdoor spiders,” they are unapologetic homebodies, spending nearly their entire lives chilling in a single burrow. Unlike their close, but much more famous relatives the tarantulas, tree trapdoor spiders are teeny, with most species small enough to fit on a fingernail.

Just a few meters away from where they originally hatched, they build silk- lined tubes within the bark of trees and hide inside, waiting for prey to come close enough for an ambush attack. And yet, despite the simple, sedentary habits of the tree trapdoor spider, findings in a newly published paper in the journal PLOS ONE suggest that one variety of these humble hermits has accomplished a seemingly impossible feat—voyaging across an entire ocean. The intrepid arachnid in question is Moggridgea rainbowi, a tree trapdoor spider found only in the woodlands of South Australia’s Kangaroo Island. Recent research has determined that this spider is somewhat of a black sheep among its closest family, being the only Moggridgea species found in Australia.

Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Sports journalists and bloggers covering NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MMA, college football and basketball, NASCAR, fantasy sports and more. News, photos, mock drafts, game.

• Weeks after the US Army told personnel to immediately shelve all drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI, citing unspecified “cyber vulnerabilities associated with.
• JOIN THE SINNERBOY MAILING LIST! Submit your email address here.

Where are the rest of its brethren? Africa. Literally thousands of miles away across the Indian Ocean. The explanation for dramatically split distributions like this has generally revolved around the fact that, up until about 1. Australia, Africa, Antarctica, and South America were all part of the supercontinent “Gondwana.” The imprint of former Gondwana exists in the distribution of many groups of organisms even today, including Migidae. The assumption about the lone Australian Moggridgea spider had been that it was a relict species of a bygone era, separated from its African relatives by continental drift.

It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation, but not one that had been directly tested. To confirm that the continental split up was behind this familial fragmentation, the timing of the separation of the African and Australian spider populations would need to line up with the timing of the African and Australian landmasses. Luckily, modern genetic techniques can allow scientists to estimate just how long ago different species diverged from one another, and this is exactly what a team of Australian scientists did with these tree trapdoor spiders. Watch The Enforcer Online Hulu.

On the December 1, 2009 episode of ECW on Syfy, Marasciulo, under the respelled name of Trent Barreta, and Caylen Croft debuted as villains, squashing a tag team. Spiders in the family Migidae don’t get out much. Known as “tree trapdoor spiders,” they are unapologetic homebodies, spending nearly their entire lives.

The research team took DNA samples from several species of African Moggridgea spiders, the Australian oddball spider (Moggridgea rainbowi), and some other close, Australian trapdoor spider relatives (Bertmainius). In analyzing the DNA, the researchers found specific differences between several genes in the spiders, and compared them to ascertain the evolutionary relationships between species. This verified that the Australian Moggridgea species was indeed most closely related to the African spiders. Then, to figure out when all these species separated from each other, the scientists used a “molecular clock,” which relies on the fact that DNA mutations accrue at a predictable rate. The results showed that the Australian Moggridgea species is fairly young, separating from its African relatives only about two million years ago.

This is way too recently to support the idea that Moggridgea rainbowi is an Aussie because of the supercontinent shake up—Africa and Australia broke apart from each other 1. At the same time, the divergence is also much older than any occupation of Kangaroo Island by 1. European settlers, which theoretically could have introduced the spider from Africa via ships. Two million years ago, the most logical way for a trapdoor spider to get from Africa to Australia was by going right across the Indian Ocean. Unlike some other spiders, which can use their silk to “balloon” and even direct their aerial path over huge ocean distances, trapdoor spiders are firmly grounded. This means that their most likely method of transport was passively floating there, sailing the high seas on a mat of plant debris. This phenomenon—called “rafting”—is a wild card way for living things to spread across the globe.

Madagascar appears to have received many of its mammals this way, as does South America in regards to burrowing worm lizards. We’ve even seen it occur in real time, when hurricane debris allowed iguanas to colonize a Caribbean island. Somewhat ironically, the trapdoor spider’s stationary lifestyle is probably what made its epic journey possible. Cozy in their burrows, they would be oblivious as a storm or landslide sent their wooden domiciles into the sea.

Basically, these spiders are less “Bilbo fleeing Bag End for a grand adventure,” and more “guy accidentally becoming a stowaway by passing out in a ship’s cargo hold.” While this rafting scenario is still a hypothesis, it is the only explanation so far that fits with the timeline of divergence of the African and Australian species. The proposal would be solidified if future genetics research on the other island spiders also shows an evolutionary timeline that doesn’t match up with geologic events, or if trapdoor spiders are discovered in a vegetation raft at sea. This study’s revelations highlight the burgeoning role of modern genetics in uncovering the epic and unexpected origins of what we thought were familiar organisms.

Just this year, genetics research also upended how we think of modern elephant relationships, and helped reveal a species of praying mantis with sexes that look nothing alike. Showtime Full The Bling Ring Online Free more. As newer genetic methods develop, our understanding of the Tree of Life will continue to radically change. Jake Buehler is a Seattle area science writer with an adoration for the Tree of Life’s weird, wild, and unsung—follow him on Twitter or at his blog.

DJI Rolls Out 'Local Data Mode' for Drones After US Army Ban Over Unknown 'Cyber Vulnerabilities'Weeks after the US Army told personnel to immediately shelve all drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI, citing unspecified “cyber vulnerabilities associated with DJI products,” the company has introduced a new “local data mode” for its apps.“We are creating local data mode to address the needs of our enterprise customers, including public and private organizations that are using DJI technology to perform sensitive operations around the world,” company VP for Policy and Legal Affairs Brendan Schulman said in a press release, per Tech. Crunch. DJI’s apps use the internet to update maps, restricted flight zones and other relevant data, as well as have an optional feature to sync with the company’s database to store flight data. The new local mode disables all of those features. It’s clear even by the company’s own admission the timing with the Army announcement is not a coincidence, though Tech.

Crunch reported DJI says the local mode was in development for several months and was not originally spurred by US brass.“We’re not responding to the Army, which has never explained its concerns to us,” DJI communications director for North America Adam Lisberg told Tech. Crunch. “.. We announced it today because enterprise customers with serious data security have made clear they need something like this for a while, and the Army memo reinforced that concern for them.” The military has declined to reveal the security vulnerabilities, presumably for operational security reasons—small drones like those manufactured by DJI are already in limited deployment with the US military, and are widely used by some guerilla forces that oppose them like ISIS extremists. DJI also says the Army has not clued them in. But it’s not clear that disabling internet access on a drone’s control app would plug whatever hole the military suspects it found anyhow. It’s possible there’s a vulnerability in the way DJI drones remotely interface with its controller, or a way of tricking the drone into leaking data to another user without breaking into the app at all. It’s also possible the military sees the risk of a drone being hacked into as minimal, but someone didn’t like the idea of any of its data possibly being sent to a private manufacturer in another country, or of US personnel using a commercial drone system at all.

US military use is not Chinese manufacturer DJI’s core target market, though. That the Army uses commercial drones in any capacity at all speaks to a need which will likely be filled in the future by military drones built to specification for use in the field and elsewhere.[Tech.