I've been a practicing scientist since 1990, and it never ceases to amaze me just how much time it takes to pull together a journal manuscript. These two figures alone took about 16 hours (it's how I spent this weekend)--and that doesn't count the time spent practicing to get to the point that I could get this quality of images. Whew! Done!
These are the palps and epigyne of wolf spiders, documenting a new species.
@rspfau
They look extremely good fwiw
A) Congrats.
B) This is why I like buying scientists drinks. After a few, they’re like, “let me tell you about this weird/amazing thing I study!”.
In the figure with 8 epigyne, the structures that looks like a shadow-puppet rabbits are where the sperm is stored in the female. The complex apparatus within the male palp has to be inserted into the epigyne and these sperm receptacles filled up--hopefully before the female decides she's hungry or annoyed.
@rspfau The chapter on spider mating in the book "Bitch" by Lucy Cooke is as frightening as it gets, only softened by the statement, paraphrasing, that the entire raison d'être of a spider male is to find a female to mate with.
Chapter 4: "Fifty ways to eat your lover"
https://archive.org/details/bitch-lucy-cooke-z-lib.org/mode/2up
@albertcardona @rspfau "This book intends to demonstrate that sex is wildly variable and that gendered ideas based on assumptions of binary sex are nonsense."
I'm into it. 👍🏻
