MMost living things on Earth are in the shadows and not discovered by science. Even conservative assessments It is believed that only 13 to 18 percent of organisms have been identified and described. Task detectionDescribing and naming these species may seem like a daunting task, but there are always surprises in store for scientists trying to bring order to the chaos. This is what happened to a group of researchers who discovered a previously unknown species of spider hidden in the forests of western Thailand. They not only found a species that had escaped the attention of scientific enterprises, but also found a rare individual that was half man and half woman.
View, described for the first time in the magazine Zootaxa Scientists at the Center of Excellence in Entomology at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok demonstrate striking physical differences between the sexes. The female is larger—about one inch long—with a distinct orange coloration, while the male is about half the size and appears gray due to a mysterious white substance covering its body.
The individual could have arisen as a result of the loss of sex chromosomes due to nematode infection of the female embryo.
Among the orange and gray arachnids collected by the research team was an oddball specimen that was half orange and half gray. Researchers examined this specimen and discovered that this particular spider was a rare gynandromorph.
Gynandromorphs differ from the relatively more common hermaphrodites in some key ways. Although hermaphrodites have both female and male reproductive organs, they still exhibit normal bilateral symmetry—both halves of the body appear as mirror images. Gynandromorphic individuals, on the contrary, demonstrate bilateral asymmetry; one side is female and the other is male. Although the causes of gynandromorphy in this specimen are unknown, the authors believe that this individual may be the result of sex chromosome loss due to nematode infection of the female embryo.
Such a colorful spider deserves a colorful name, and scientists have given this species a particularly appropriate name. The researchers called their discovery Damarcus inazuma after the character Inuzama from the manga One piece for several reasons. Firstly, the character Inuzama has the ability to change appearance from female to male. Secondly, similarly D. exam A gynandromorph, Inuzama is always dressed in orange and white, split down the middle.
Based on the classification of researchers D. inuzama supported by molecular data, this is the first documented example of gynandromorphy in Bemmeridae, a family of funnel-shaped trapdoor spiders common in Asia and Africa.
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Lead image: Damarcus inazuma: Rice. 6a: Kunset et al., 2025:
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5696.3.6). ©Magnolia Press. Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder.
