
Spiders that have formed armies 50,000 strong - unsettledtck
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160122-meet-the-spiders-that-have-formed-armies-50000-strong
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a_bonobo
That is interesting - one of the postulated prerequisites for sociality in
insects is haplo-diploidy, where one gender is haploid and the other is
diploid, like it happens in bees and ants.

This leads to the curious outcome where sisters are closer related to their
sisters than to their daughters:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_rati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratios_in_haplodiploidy)

I assume these spiders are all diploid?

Wikipedia says that part of the social behaviors in these spiders is that they
don't discriminate towards foreign offspring. I'm reminded of Argentine super-
colonies, which are ant species which form enormous colonies stretching
several hundred kilometers but which may or may not be genetically distinct -
one hypothesis as to why they cooperate and not fight is this:

>the reason ants in the Mediterranean don't fight is that, although they are
genetically diverse, they have lost the diversity in the genes that are
involved in recognition and thus don't recognize each other as different.

Source, 2004:
[http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/april7/antstudies-47.html](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/april7/antstudies-47.html)

Wonder whether these spiders have the same thing!

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sandworm101
Along similar lines. Anyone with a shark phobia has something new to fear:
Great whites also hunt in packs.

>At Seal Island, white sharks arrive and depart year after year in stable
“clans” of two to six individuals. Whether clan members are related is
unknown, but they get along peacefully enough. In fact, the social structure
of a clan is probably most aptly compared to that of a wolf pack.

[http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-
past/191391/...](http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-
past/191391/sociable-killers?page=4)

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pvaldes
Hmmm... so white sharks can be trained.

Excellent

I need a jet ski

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fractallyte
John Wyndham's SF novel 'Web'
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_\(novel\)))
was an interesting exploration of spider cooperation - uncannily close to the
observations detailed in this article, but written in the 1960s!

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nefitty
If anyone would like to revel in the goosebumps this awesome article elicits,
I found a sweet list of spiders in film up to 2007:

[http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/spider.films.html](http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/spider.films.html)

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nissehulth
Natures own social network.

~~~
SixSigma
Let's hope it doesn't turn into a World Wide Web

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contingencies
You don't get to 50,000 friends without eating a few enemies.

