There’s barely a college town in the world that isn’t alive at night with boys looking to meet girls. That’s true in Auburn, Alabama, home of the famous Auburn Tigers, and that’s true even when the boys and girls are spiders. In 2012, scientists at the school’s Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology got curious about the unusual male spiders always turning up on the sidewalks and in the garages and swimming pools of greater Auburn during the breeding months of November and December. They studied the arachnids and learned that they indeed represented something new. The Trapdoor part of the species’ name comes from the females, since they spend most of their lives lurking in burrows covered by trapdoors made of soil and silk. The Auburn mascot is responsible for the Tiger part of the name. But the new spider will likely never be the most cleverly named species in its genus. That honor belongs to the Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, named in 2007 for, yes, that other great, gnarled natural wonder: Neil Young.
Science & Space
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8. The Auburn Tiger Trapdoor Spider
Full List
Top 10 Green Stories
- 10. Superstorm Sandy Brings Climate Change Home
- 9. Offshore Oil Drilling Begins in the Arctic
- 8. Climate Change Goes Missing in the 2012 Election
- 7. 2012 on Track to Be the Warmest Year on Record
- 6. Arctic Sea Ice Melts to Record Low Levels
- 5. The Battle Over Keystone XL
- 4. The U.S. Oil Boom
- 3. California Puts a Cap on Carbon
- 2. The Battle to Label GM Foods
- 1. The Great Midwest Drought
Top 10 New Species
- 10. Prehistoric Crocodile
- 9. The Galapagos Deep-Sea Cat Shark
- 8. The Auburn Tiger Trapdoor Spider
- 7. Ancient Rodents in Chilean Grasslands
- 6. Peruvian Porcupine
- 5. Peruvian Small-Eared Shrew
- 4. The Congolese Cercopithecus Lomamiensis Monkey
- 3. Parrot-Headed, Big-Fanged Porcupine Dinosaur
- 2. Big-Fanged Jumping Spider
- 1. Peruvian Night Monkey
Top 10 Space Moments
- 10. The Moon Implicated in the Sinking of the Titanic
- 9. NASA Gets Two New Hubbles–For Free
- 8. Nanoparticles in the Moon’s Soil
- 7. North Korea’s Satellite Flop
- 6. Geysers on Mars
- 5. Ocean on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus
- 4. Discovery of Earthlike Planet Around Alpha Centauri
- 3. Dawn Spacecraft Geads Off to Ceres
- 2. Dragon Spacecraft Docks with International Space Station
- 1. Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars