I’ve gotten the feedback that I’m too easy on my main character and don’t let bad things happen to her, and I agree, but every time I get to a darker moment in the draft, I either soften it or I put off writing it. And I’m really struggling to write those parts. There are dead children, missing children, injuries, panic, fear, etc. Here’s the problem: My book is about a natural disaster, and there is death and destruction everywhere. Children dying from diseases or accidents. Children separated from their families at the border. For a long time, I had to avoid reading the news. But having a child has made me much more sensitive. I’ve always been a very sensitive person, easily moved and disturbed by the news or stories of suffering or triumph. A few months later, I gave birth to my first child. Others come bearing gifts, like a silk-wrapped prey item, to presumably occupy the female while they attempt to mate.Two years ago, I started working on a novel. “Some males can induce acquiescence in their female partner - for example, knock her out - to escape. “There are all kinds of great stories of strategies male spiders have come up with to escape being eaten by their mates,” Hebets said. “Female cannibalism of males is common in many spider species,” said Eileen Hebets, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor who has studied mating preferences in spiders. Schneider explained that in these cases, the female may just as well eat the male than allow him to live on - although the meal is considered a small one. Female spiders benefit from eating their partners because it either weeds out unfit males or prevents the best males from mating with other females. Overall, spider sexual canniblism can happen before, during or after mating. For example, Schneider found that the males of the golden orb-weaving spider Trichonephila fenestrata “sacrifice their front legs during mating to keep the female occupied,” Schneider said. In turn, a number of male spiders have evolved different means of escape. While sexual cannibalism is generally a rarity, it is common across spiders and scorpions. Shichang Zhang, a professor at Hubei University in China and the study’s first author, said he first observed this catapulting when observing these spiders out in nature, and he wanted to examine how the action was associated with sexual conflict (when two sexes have conflicting reproduction strategies). During this display, the males can spin up to 175 times per second during the flight. When they release themselves from this fold, the ensuing release of hydraulic pressure causes the legs to rapidly expand, sending the males soaring in a clockwise rotation.ĭuring these catapults, the spiders accelerate so quickly that the action can’t be captured in detail by common cameras. Through the use of high-resolution video cameras, the scientists found these spiders initiate their catapult maneuver by folding their front legs against the female. This is facilitated by a newly identified capability described Monday in the journal Current Biology. Scientists discovered male spiders of the species Philoponella prominens can survive encounters with aggressive females because of a unique ability to catapult away.
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