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Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them

Organismal biology has been steadily losing fashion in both formal education and scientific research. Simultaneous with this is an observable decrease in the connection between humans, their environment, and the organisms with which they share the planet. Nonetheless, we propose that organismal biol...

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Autores principales: Mammola, Stefano, Michalik, Peter, Hebets, Eileen A., Isaia, Marco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5668680/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29104823
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3972
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author Mammola, Stefano
Michalik, Peter
Hebets, Eileen A.
Isaia, Marco
author_facet Mammola, Stefano
Michalik, Peter
Hebets, Eileen A.
Isaia, Marco
author_sort Mammola, Stefano
collection PubMed
description Organismal biology has been steadily losing fashion in both formal education and scientific research. Simultaneous with this is an observable decrease in the connection between humans, their environment, and the organisms with which they share the planet. Nonetheless, we propose that organismal biology can facilitate scientific observation, discovery, research, and engagement, especially when the organisms of focus are ubiquitous and charismatic animals such as spiders. Despite being often feared, spiders are mysterious and intriguing, offering a useful foundation for the effective teaching and learning of scientific concepts and processes. In order to provide an entryway for teachers and students—as well as scientists themselves—into the biology of spiders, we compiled a list of 99 record breaking achievements by spiders (the “Spider World Records”). We chose a world-record style format, as this is known to be an effective way to intrigue readers of all ages. We highlighted, for example, the largest and smallest spiders, the largest prey eaten, the fastest runners, the highest fliers, the species with the longest sperm, the most venomous species, and many more. We hope that our compilation will inspire science educators to embrace the biology of spiders as a resource that engages students in science learning. By making these achievements accessible to non-arachnologists and arachnologists alike, we suggest that they could be used: (i) by educators to draw in students for science education, (ii) to highlight gaps in current organismal knowledge, and (iii) to suggest novel avenues for future research efforts. Our contribution is not meant to be comprehensive, but aims to raise public awareness on spiders, while also providing an initial database of their record breaking achievements.
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spelling pubmed-56686802017-11-03 Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them Mammola, Stefano Michalik, Peter Hebets, Eileen A. Isaia, Marco PeerJ Biodiversity Organismal biology has been steadily losing fashion in both formal education and scientific research. Simultaneous with this is an observable decrease in the connection between humans, their environment, and the organisms with which they share the planet. Nonetheless, we propose that organismal biology can facilitate scientific observation, discovery, research, and engagement, especially when the organisms of focus are ubiquitous and charismatic animals such as spiders. Despite being often feared, spiders are mysterious and intriguing, offering a useful foundation for the effective teaching and learning of scientific concepts and processes. In order to provide an entryway for teachers and students—as well as scientists themselves—into the biology of spiders, we compiled a list of 99 record breaking achievements by spiders (the “Spider World Records”). We chose a world-record style format, as this is known to be an effective way to intrigue readers of all ages. We highlighted, for example, the largest and smallest spiders, the largest prey eaten, the fastest runners, the highest fliers, the species with the longest sperm, the most venomous species, and many more. We hope that our compilation will inspire science educators to embrace the biology of spiders as a resource that engages students in science learning. By making these achievements accessible to non-arachnologists and arachnologists alike, we suggest that they could be used: (i) by educators to draw in students for science education, (ii) to highlight gaps in current organismal knowledge, and (iii) to suggest novel avenues for future research efforts. Our contribution is not meant to be comprehensive, but aims to raise public awareness on spiders, while also providing an initial database of their record breaking achievements. PeerJ Inc. 2017-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC5668680/ /pubmed/29104823 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3972 Text en © 2017 Mammola et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Mammola, Stefano
Michalik, Peter
Hebets, Eileen A.
Isaia, Marco
Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
title Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
title_full Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
title_fullStr Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
title_full_unstemmed Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
title_short Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
title_sort record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5668680/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29104823
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3972
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