The march of wasp spiders into more northerly territories demonstrates how climate change may prompt species to alter their temperature preferences.
By analyzing the genetic diversity and distribution of the wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi) geneticists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology have pinned the initial shift in the spiders' range to the 1930s, occurring "in parallel with the onset of global warming."
The research, which sampled historical specimens from museum collections as well as contemporary spider populations, noted that after this initial change interbreeding allowed the spiders to gradually shift their natural temperature preferences and penetrate farther and farther north.
To test the theory, the researchers transplanted spiders from northern populations to southern, Mediterranean climes and vice versa—the arachnid equivalent of a foreign exchange program. The northern spiders exhibited signs of heat stress during their sojourn while the southern spiders couldn't survive the northern chill.
"Global warming could have facilitated the initial admixture of populations and this resulted in genetic lineages with new habitat preferences," said the study's author, Henrik Krehenwinkel.
This post originally appeared on Wired UK.