A mother's love nine hundred years old
Maternal instinct of female spiders, found in a 9 billion-year-old piece of amber.
A mother's love for her children is eternal. And such behavior is seen more or less in all animals and humans. How long ago this maternal love came to animals, we cannot form any idea. But the specimens, often found in a fossilized state, reinforce the idea that this behavior of motherly affection and caring for her newborns goes back hundreds of years, when life in its simplest form inhabited the earth. Or at least, encased in the resin of a fossilized tree that is 99 million years old confirms this behavior. Some adult female spiders, now extinct, were discovered guarding their pre-hatched spiders in recently mined amber in Southeast Asia. According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences that was conducted on amber samples from ancient trees discovered there.
The resin of the tree in which the spiders were found had hardened, permanently enclosing the arachnid mothers with their offspring in several tiny fragments. The discovery is considered the oldest evidence of maternal care in spiders, according to the journal.
Study co-researcher Paul Selden, a professor of geology at the University of Kansas, said the fossil record provided "physical evidence through these miniatures" of this maternal love that is now present in other arthropods but Records of this are rare, but we now have some evidence that this behavior is very ancient
"The female spider was holding an egg sac with tiny spiderlings inside — exactly the position you'd find female spiders protecting their eggs today," Seldon told Live Science journal. " "So, this is a really common female spider behavior that is captured in a moment by this fossilization process."
The fossilized spiders discovered belonged to the lagonomegopidae, a family of ancient spiders that are now extinct but can be recognized by a large pair of eyes on the front corners of their heads. According to Live Science, spiders as a species have a long history and first appeared in the Carboniferous period between 359 million and 299 million years ago.
One photo shows a large female spider with part of an egg sac underneath, suggesting maternal care. This sample, which was present in the Northern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous period, spanning 145 million to 66 million years ago, gives an idea of the mutualistic behaviors found in such insects.
Other pieces of amber reveal a group of tiny spiders that had just hatched, including a female lagonomegopid spider protecting her egg sac from the damage of being trapped in tree resin. After the spiderlings hatched, they stayed together and were protected by their mother, as exemplified by the leg fragments of a female spider from a single piece of amber. He gave his life while protecting.
The results of the LiveScience report show that all these baby spiders lived in close proximity and were protected by their mothers as they hatched. But as resin flowed from the tree into their nest, the mother chose to stay with her young spiders and protect them, and as a result, stayed there until the end. , until she drowned in the resin along with her children and died. Later this sample of amber was preserved along with the tree and became fossilized.
"Care by any parent is an investment that increases the fitness of their offspring, often at the expense of the parent's survival and future reproduction," the study authors said. compels. Its evolution represents a breakthrough in the adaptation of animals to their environment. This behavior has important implications for the evolution of ecology and sociality. And it helps to understand new social behaviors. is, which is also common in our human society.
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