Using black widow spiders, a team of scientists has successfully extracted, amplified, and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from spider webs that identified both spider and prey to species. Southern black widow spider (Latrodectus mactans) with its prey house cricket (Acheta domesticus) trapped in spider web. Image credit: Scott Camazine, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0142503.g001. The team, led by Dr Charles Xu of the University of Notre Dame, used three...
