NEW SPIDER CRICKET

NEW SPIDER CRICKET

Subject: Environment

Context: Recently, a team of zoologists headed by DrRanjanaJaiswara of the Zoology Department of Punjab University, Chandigarh has discovered a new spider cricket from Chhattisgarh.

Concept:

• It has been found in the Kurra caves of Chhattisgarh.
• The new subgenus was named Jayanti after Professor Jayant Biswas, one of the leading cave explorers in the country, who assisted the team.
• It has become the twelfth subgenus, or species, of cricket identified under the genus Arachnomimus Saussure, 1897.

Arachnomimus Saussure, 1897

• Arachnomimus is the genus name given by Swiss Entomologist Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure in 1878 to crickets that resembled spiders.
• The word Arachnomimus is derived from two Ancient Greek words arakhne means “spider” and mimos, means “imitator, actor”.
• It is apt because crickets of this group are commonly called spider crickets because of their smaller body size and long legs.