Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver & Genetic Engineering

For the Society for the Conservation of Braken Bat Cave Meshweavers
DNA analysis of these spiders could help us determine how closely related they are to other cave spiders. It may turn out that they are just variations within one of the cave spider species and not as endangered as we think. I think the best approach to find this out would be to obtain DNA samples from a Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver and compare it with DNA samples from another similar cave spider and compare them.

My plan for doing this is not very complex. We first would have to obtain permission from the landowner upon whose land the cave that the Braken Bat Cave Meshweavers is. I am assuming that this may be a major stumbling block as the cave is filled in and no one has seen the spiders since 1983. I think that we should tell the landowner that if the results of our study prove that the spider is the same species as another cave spider, then the environmentalists will not be bothering him about the cave any longer. This may make him/her more willing to have us do this study on his/her land.

After obtaining permission, we must dig up the cave since it is filled in right now. After that, we must go inside and hopefully find some Braken Bat Cave Meshweavers still alive. If we do, we can use a very small needle to extract some body fluid and obtain a DNA sample from some. If we don’t find any alive, perhaps we can find some dead ones from which we can obtain a DNA sample.

We will go to another cave and obtain DNA samples from other cave spiders. We will compare the samples and see if they are very closely related. If so, we will go back to the Braken Bat Cave and get a male and female Meshweaver. We will also get male and female cave spiders from the species that we found similar to the Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver. We will put a female Meshweaver and a male of the other species in one jar and a male Meshweaver and a female of the other species in another jar. We will see if they will mate. If they do mate and the eggs hatch then we will know that they are variations of the same species since they can reproduce together.


For the Society for the Genetic Modification of the Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver
I suggest that the Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver be genetically modified so that it is able to be exposed to the sun outside of caves. I think this would help the species in that it is confined to one cave right now because it cannot go out into the world and reproduce and spread to other places. I think that we would need to get a gene from a common garden spider in order to do this. We would need to isolate the gene that makes its exoskeleton and inject it into a non-disease causing virus and inject some Braken Bat Cave Meshweavers with this gene. There are some possible environmental impacts that may occur as a result of releasing individuals with this modification. Because there are so few Braken Bat Cave Meshweavers, we don’t know if it has any natural predators. If there are no predators, the population of these spiders can grow to an alarming rate. We also don’t know what the effect of an overpopulation of these will do to other spider species in terms of reducing their food supply.



Sources
Department of the Interior: Fish and Wildlife Service. Feceral Register/Vol. 63, No. 250/Wednesday, December 30, 1998. Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Proposal to List Nine Bexar County, Texas Invertebrate Species as Endangered. Retrieved 20 February 2007 from http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/SpeciesReport.do?spcode=J01D.

Gander Academy. Caves Theme Page. Retrieved 20 February 2007 from http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/cave.htm.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Species Profile: Braken Bat Cave Meshweaver (Circurina venii). Retrieved 20 February 2007 from http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/SpeciesReport.do?spcode=J01D.

Zipcode Zoo. Cicurina venii (Veni’s Cave Spider). Retrieved 20 February 2007 from http://zipcodezoo.com/Animals/C/Cicurina_venii.asp.