edgepedia

All articles starting with S

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Spider (solitaire)

Spider (solitaire): two-deck, ten-column patience game won by building eight King-to-Ace same-suit runs; played at 1, 2, or 4 suits; popularized by Microsoft Plus! 98 and Windows Me; generalized version NP-Complete.

Spider anatomy

Spider anatomy is the body plan of spiders: a two-part body of prosoma and abdomen joined by a pedicel, with eight legs, fanged chelicerae, and spinnerets.

Spider angioma

Spider angioma (spider nevus, nevus araneus, spider telangiectasia): a benign skin lesion with a central dilated arteriole and radiating capillaries; common in pregnancy and a marker of liver disease when multiple.

Spider as world-weaver in creation cosmology

Spider as world-weaver in creation cosmology is the mythic motif in which spiders create or shape the world by spinning, weaving, or lowering it, found across Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.

Spider behavior

Spider behavior: dispersal by silk ballooning (aerodynamic and electrostatic mechanisms), web building and foraging, learning and cognition in jumping spiders, mating strategies, and spiders' pest-control role in agroecosystems.

Spider bite

Spider bite: injury from spider fangs, usually minor. Medically significant groups are Latrodectus widow spiders (latrodectism, muscle cramps) and Loxosceles recluse spiders (necrotic lesions); overdiagnosis outside native ranges is common.

Spider cannibalism

Spider cannibalism covers sexual cannibalism, where female spiders eat mates before, during, or after copulation, and nonsexual cannibalism among juveniles and social species. Key hypotheses are adaptive foraging, mate choice, and aggressive spillover; males counter with nuptial gifts, remote copulation, and self-sacrifice.

Spider conservation in Europe

Spider conservation in Europe protects about 4,500 spider species through red lists, legal protection, and monitoring; 714 species are nationally threatened, while EU law covers just one species.

Spider conservation in New Zealand

Spider conservation in New Zealand is the national system of threat listings and recovery programs protecting a highly endemic spider fauna, with only three legally protected taxa.

Spider crab

Spider crabs are crabs of the superfamily Majoidea, defined by long, slender legs on a small carapace, and many species camouflage themselves with algae, sponges, and other living material.

Spider families and higher taxa

Spider families and higher taxa are the groupings of spiders (order Araneae) above genus: roughly 139 families, arranged into suborders, infraorders, and superfamilies, tracked by the World Spider Catalog.

Spider families of Asia

The spider families of Asia are the families represented across the continent's forests, mountains, and river plains, led by jumping spiders, with East Asia holding 63 araneomorph families.

Spider fauna of South America

The spider fauna of South America comprises 8,302 described species in 83 families, about 17% of the world's spider biodiversity, with 94% of species endemic to the continent.

Spider fighting

Spider fighting (kumo gassen, kumo sumo, Philippine spider wrestling) is a folk game or betting sport pitting two spiders against each other on a stick, with documented traditions in Kagoshima, Japan, and the Philippines using female orb-weavers.

Spider foraging and predatory behavior

Spider foraging and predatory behavior describes how spiders that hunt without capture webs find, choose, and subdue prey, using vision, vibration, silk wrapping, venom, and aggressive mimicry of other spiders.

Spider Grandmother

Spider Grandmother (Hopi Koyangwuti/Kokyangwuti; Navajo Na'ashjé'ii Asdzáá) is a Southwestern Native American creator goddess who made humans from clay, led them to the Fourth World, and taught weaving, honored through spirit lines in baskets and rugs.

Spider keeping

Spider keeping is the practice of keeping live spiders as invertebrate pets, dominated by tarantulas and jumping spiders in a global trade of millions of individuals.

Spider mite

Spider mites (Tetranychidae) are plant-feeding arachnid mites, including the two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae, a polyphagous crop pest on nearly 800 plant species and the most acaricide-resistant arthropod known.

Spider monkey

Spider monkeys (genus Ateles) are large, highly frugivorous New World monkeys of Central and South American rainforests, with seven recognized species, prehensile tails, fission-fusion societies, and key seed-disperser roles; all species are declining, from vulnerable to critically endangered.

Spider monkey optimization

Spider monkey optimization (SMO) is a swarm intelligence metaheuristic for continuous numerical optimization, introduced by Jagdish Chand Bansal and colleagues in 2014, modeling the fission–fusion foraging of spider monkeys.

Spider One

Spider One, born Michael David Cummings in 1968, is an American singer and filmmaker, founder and vocalist of Boston-formed rock band Powerman 5000 and younger brother of Rob Zombie; known for the 1999 platinum album Tonight the Stars Revolt!.

Spider protection and recovery efforts

Spider protection and recovery efforts are conservation actions for threatened spiders: legal protection, habitat management, captive rearing, and translocation, with habitat protection the most effective measure.

Spider pulsar

A spider pulsar is a millisecond pulsar in a tight binary orbit whose wind strips, or ablates, its low-mass companion, dividing into black widows and redbacks.

Spider Sabich

Spider Sabich, born Vladimir Peter Sabich Jr., was an American alpine ski racer who competed at the 1968 Winter Olympics and won the World Pro Skiing Championships in 1971 and 1972.

Spider silk

Spider silk: protein fibres (spidroins) spun by all spiders; dragline silk reaches 1.7 GPa strength with high toughness from β-sheet/amorphous structure; recombinant production enables biomedical and textile uses.

Spider taxonomy

Spider taxonomy: the classification of order Araneae, begun by Clerck in 1757, now 139 families, 4,527 genera, and 54,150 species in the World Spider Catalog, with Mesothelae, Mygalomorphae, and Araneomorphae as main lineages.

Spider trickster traditions in world folklore

Spider trickster traditions are folktale cycles in which a cunning spider outwits stronger opponents, best known through Anansi of the Akan and found across West Africa and the Americas.

Spider vision

Spider vision is the visual system of spiders (order Araneae), built from up to four pairs of camera eyes; only a minority, including jumping spiders, resolve sharp images and color.

Spider wasp

Spider wasps (Pompilidae): cosmopolitan solitary wasps, about 4,855–5,000 species, that paralyze spiders with sodium-channel toxins and provision single eggs; includes the tarantula hawk, rated 4 on the Schmidt pain index.

Spider web

Spider web: silk structure built by spiders from protein fibre via spinnerets to catch prey. Orb, sheet, tangle, funnel types; viscid glue versus cribellate Velcro-like capture silk; stickiness constrained by thread strength.