Monthly Archives: December 2019

From spider males and their allegedly numb genitalia

The sensory capacity of male spiders during mating may be higher than previously thought. In this blog, Tim Dederichs, one of the corresponding authors of a new article published in Frontiers in Zoology, takes us through testing the hypothesis that innervation of the spider copulatory organs may be part of the ground pattern of spiders, which means that it can be observed in all spiders.

MinION: Democratising biodiversity research by misusing a portable long-read sequencer for short-read barcoding

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Many animal species on Earth are awaiting discovery and description, but finding all these unknown species is a monumental task. Here, we discuss how the MinION, an affordable, portable sequencer could speed up the process of discovering new species and propose this tool for large-scale biodiversity discovery across the planet. Our paper expanding on what we discuss here published today in BMC Biology.