Spider-like creatures help uncover the surprising origins of fatherhood
A study using citizen science data has revealed that parental care in harvestmen arachnids evolved and disappeared multiple times throughout their history. The research highlights distinct evolutionary paths for maternal and paternal care.
Why it matters
Understanding the evolutionary origins of parental care provides deeper insights into biological diversity and the development of complex social behaviors in nature.
Citizen scientists have helped researchers uncover how parental care evolved in harvestmen, a group of spider like arachnids, by contributing observations through the popular nature platform iNaturalist. The findings, published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society , reveal that parental guarding behavior has appeared, disappeared, and evolved again multiple times over the group's evolutionary history.
By combining nearly 30 years of field research with observations submitted to iNaturalist, an international team led by a University of S o Paulo scientist more than doubled the number of documented examples of parental care in harvestmen. The expanded dataset also allowed researchers to reconstruct, for the first time, how both maternal and paternal care evolved within the superfamily Gonyleptoidea.
Citizen science reveals the evolution of parental care
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