Rajkot doctor, Ahmedabad researcher discover new species of spider

Later on, the 29-year-old doctor found a female spider which looked of the same species from the same microhabitat in the backyard of his home.

Dr Dudhatra clicked photos of the spiders and sent the specimen of the creatures to Dhruv Prajapati, a spider researcher based out of Ahmedabad. Prajapati studied the specimens for almost three months with the help of microscopes and described the species after dissecting the specimens. “After studying the specimen, we concluded that the spiders found in Rajkot belonged to the Tanzania Kocal & Kemal genus of jumping spiders but they were a distinct species not described anywhere by anyone so far. Therefore, the spiders sighted near the Khirsara grassland were a new species and the first species of Tanzania Kocal & Kemal genus in Asia,” Prajapati, who has discovered 18 new species of spiders, says.

The findings of the duo have been detailed in a research paper published in the September, 2022 issue of Revue suisse de Zoologie or the Swiss Journal of Zoology, a biennial peer-reviewed scientific journal for zoological systematics. The journal is published by the Swiss Zoological Society and the Museum of Natural History, Geneva.

“Since my school days, I have been interested in wildlife, especially in jumping spiders because spiders of this genus have a very well-developed cognition. Unlike spiders of other genus, jumping spiders don’t spin a web for trapping their prey but instead rely on their visual systems and jumping abilities to hunt their prey,” Dr Dudhatra, son of a Rajkot-based physician says.

The new species is tiny with the body length of male being just 1.29 millimetres and that of female 1.67 mm.

The males have shiny dark-black carapace and with prominent reddish orange apical tip on femur (the third segment of legs in insects) of the third pair of legs.

“These spiders can cover a distance 15 times longer than their body length in one jump while hunting. They stalk their prey before attacking and immobilising them with their venom,” Prajapati says, adding they play a very important role in the food chain by keeping insect populations in check.

The researchers have named the new species after Yellapragada Subbarao (1895-1948), a chemist who was the first to detail the role of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a compound which provides energy to living cells for activities like contraction of muscles etc.

“Subbarao had made very important contributions and yet not many know about it. I had read about him and my brother, who is also a doctor, suggested that we name the new species after him. Therefore, we named the new species Tanzania Yellapragadi to pay tribute to Subbarao,” Dr Dudhatra says.

This is the second new species of spider to be reported from Gujarat this calendar year and fourth in span of around a year. In February this year, researchers of Bhakta Kavi Narsinh Mehta University, Junagadh and Prajapati had reported the discovery of a palp-footed species of palpimanus genus of spiders after collecting specimen from Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary on the border of Junagadh city.