E27: Tiny spiders from Central America and a brief discussion of “spider porn” and a species named after a Brazilian soccer team!

Dr. Thiago da Silva Moreira is an Adjunct Faculty at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

He talks to me about his recent paper published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society and his descriptions of six new species from Central America and the Caribbean.

We discuss common names for linyphiid spiders, web structure, sexual selection of the genitals of these spiders, spider porn as a pickup line (!!), what it’s like trying to find tiny spiders in tropical habitat, a spider named after famed author Neil Gaiman, a species named after a famous Brazilian soccer team, and how describing new species is a scientific hypothesis!

The title of the paper is “Systematics of the Neotropical spider genera Jalapyphantes and Selenyphantes and the circumscription of the Pocobletus clade (Araneae: Linyphiidae).” The paper is currently available here: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/192/3/896/6070718?redirectedFrom=fulltext

To learn more about Dr. Thiago da Silva Moreira, follow him on Twitter, @tsmoreira, or check out his faculty page or Research Gate page: https://biology.columbian.gwu.edu/thiago-da-silva-moreira https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thiago-Da-Silva-Moreira