From spider silk to science: a new way to access hidden fungal diversity

Pensoft Publishers

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Representative orb webs illustrating web architecture and debris decoration.

view more 

Credit: Thanakron Into et al., 2026

A new study published in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal suggests that spider webs - particularly those incorporating environmental debris - can serve as natural, non-destructive collectors of fungal material in agricultural ecosystems. The findings show that viable fungi can be recovered from these structures, including lineages that may represent previously undocumented diversity.

“Spider webs are often overlooked structures in the environment, yet they can function as natural collectors of biological material,” said Thanakron Into, a student at Thammasat University. “Our findings suggest that they can be used as a complementary approach to access microbial communities without disturbing the surrounding ecosystem.”

Researchers from Thammasat University and the National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC), Thailand, investigated whether the adhesive and particle-trapping properties of spider silk could be used to capture and culture fungi associated with airborne and environmental particles. Unlike DNA-based methods, which detect genetic material regardless of viability, this approach allows for the recovery of living organisms that can be further studied.

The study focused on tropical rice fields, using webs of the orb-weaving spider Cyclosa mulmeinensis, a species known for constructing distinctive “trashline” decorations - linear accumulations of plant fragments, insect remains, and other debris within the web. These structures can intercept a variety of particles, some of which may carry fungal propagules.

Webs were collected from rice-field embankments in Pathum Thani, Nakhon Nayok, and Phetchaburi provinces using sterile techniques. In the laboratory, material retained on the silk was gently removed and cultured, yielding 112 viable fungal isolates. These isolates were grouped into 23 taxa across six genera, including Alternaria, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Fusarium, Penicillium, and Talaromyces.

“We were particularly surprised that many of the fungi recovered from the webs remained viable and could be cultured,” Into noted. “This enables further investigation beyond presence or absence, including their biological characteristics.”

Some genetic lineages - particularly within Cladosporium and Talaromyces - did not match currently described species in available databases, indicating that additional, undocumented diversity may be present in these systems.

Conventional approaches to fungal monitoring typically rely on soil, air, or plant sampling, or on molecular methods that may not distinguish between living and non-living material. In this context, spider webs may provide a useful supplementary sampling surface for capturing biologically relevant particles.

Because spider webs are naturally maintained and, in some species, periodically rebuilt, this method can be applied with minimal disturbance to both the organisms and their environment. Importantly, the spiders themselves were not harmed during sampling, as only small sections of the web were collected.

“The ability to recover living fungi from these naturally occurring structures adds a practical dimension to biodiversity studies,” Into added. “It provides a way to link environmental sampling with downstream biological work.”

The idea that something as familiar as a spider web could quietly capture a hidden layer of biodiversity highlights how much of the natural world remains overlooked in plain sight.

While further work is needed to evaluate how broadly this approach can be applied, the study highlights the potential of spider webs as an additional tool for exploring microbial diversity in agricultural landscapes.

---

Journal

Biodiversity Data Journal

DOI

10.3897/BDJ.14.e187035 

Article Title

Spider webs as reservoirs of culturable fungal diversity: evidence from orb-weaving Cyclosa mulmeinensis spider in Thai rice agroecosystems

A Debris-decorated orb web with egg sacs constructed by an adult female, showing a characteristic linear debris line with egg sacs extending along a single radial thread; B Close-up view of the debris line, demonstrating aggregated organic materials, including plant fragments and insect remains, covering an egg sac (left) and debris only (right) incorporated into the decoration; C Decorated orb web with a debris line lacking egg sacs, shown to illustrate an alternative form of debris decoration without egg sacs.

 

Locations of paddy fields where Cyclosa mulmeinensis spider webs were collected in Thailand (left). Composition of culturable fungal taxa across genera in individual sampled webs, expressed as the number of taxa recovered per web (right).

 

Diagram displaying an overview of the study - spider webs as reservoirs of culturable fungal diversity

Credit

Thanakron Into et al., 2026

Make a beeline for it: Bumble bees can use a tool to solve a task without specific training

Summary author: Mahathi Ramaswamy

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Facebook

Bluesky
Email

A new study shows that bumble bees can position a ball underneath a fake “flower” to reach a reward, suggesting that they might have the cognitive flexibility necessary to solve complex problems. Akshaye Bhambore and colleagues demonstrated through a series of experiments that bees succeeded at this task even when the flower was out of sight during the test, reflecting goal-directed behavior independent of perceptual feedback. “Our findings provide evidence that bumble bees can exhibit spontaneous problem-solving, challenging the notion that such advanced cognitive abilities are exclusive to large-brained vertebrates,” they write. Prior research has focused on how nonhuman primates and birds use tools or objects to adapt to challenges. By contrast, it has been unclear whether invertebrates can solve problems without explicit training. Here, Bhambore et al. investigated whether bumble bees could roll a ball into a pit and climb onto it to reach a reward on the ceiling. The researchers first pretrained the bees to associate a blue ring (representing a flower) with a sugar reward and to recognize that a Styrofoam ball inside the arena could be moved around. Bumblebees with prior experience with both the flower and ball (but not the problem task) were more successful at reaching the reward than controls who had either partial or no exposure to either object. The authors next included barriers that hid the flower from sight and later added a third condition in which bees could first explore the arena and then choose between locations to access the hidden flower. Some bees were motivated to roll the ball even when there was no reward present. However, most bees that succeeded at the task rolled the ball to the correct location without attempting the wrong site first, indicating that their decision was not made via trial and error. Further research could help pinpoint the decision-making process that underlies this behavior in insects.

---

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ady1618 

Article Title

Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees

Article Publication Date

4-Jun-2026

Bumble bees show spontaneous problem-solving in study published in Science

Researchers from Finland demonstrate “box-and-banana”-style problem-solving in insects.

University of Oulu, Finland

LinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

video: 

Movie S4. Task solution in Experiment 3. This movie shows a bee solving the task in Experiment 3. The beginning of the video (habituation phase, without the ball present) is shown at accelerated speed. Following habituation, the arena is briefly illuminated with red light (not visible to bees) while the ball is placed between two visually occluding compartments. During the test phase, the bee moves the ball toward the side behind which the flower is located, positions it beneath the flower, climbs onto the ball, and contacts the flower on the arena ceiling. Video: Olli Loukola / University of Oulu.

view more 

Credit: Video: Olli Loukola / University of Oulu

In a new study bumble bees solved a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behaviour especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained. The findings challenge the long-standing assumption that spontaneous problem-solving is restricted to humans and other large-brained vertebrates.

More than 100 years ago, psychologist Wolfgang Köhler famously showed that chimpanzees could solve novel problems by suddenly combining objects in new ways, such as stacking boxes to reach an out-of-reach banana. These experiments became some of the earliest and most influential demonstrations of insight and spontaneous problem-solving in animals.

Now, researchers from the University of Oulu, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Turku in Finland report strikingly similar problem-solving abilities in bumble bees.

In a new study published in Science, bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) solved a completely novel object-manipulation task without being trained on the solution itself. The bees first learned that a blue artificial flower signalled reward. During the test, the flower was moved to the ceiling of a transparent arena, out of reach. To access it, the bees had to spontaneously generate a novel solution by moving a ball underneath the flower and climbing onto it, a behavioural sequence they had never previously encountered or been trained to perform.

“This is essentially an insect version of the classic ‘box-and-banana’ problem,” says senior author Olli Loukola, Docent at the University of Oulu. “The animal must realize that an object can be repositioned and then used as a tool to reach an otherwise inaccessible goal. What stands out about the result is that this kind of spontaneous problem-solving is now demonstrated in an insect.”

“What makes this behaviour especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained to roll the ball. This was a completely new challenge. Their behaviour appeared goal-directed with successful individuals showing more directed movement patterns,” says lead author Akshaye Bhambore from the University of Oulu.

Several control experiments to rule out simple explanations

The bees were not trained to move the ball underneath the flower. Instead, they only learned two separate pieces of information beforehand: that the blue artificial flower contained reward, and that the ball was a movable, non-threatening object.

When tested in a completely new situation, many bees used their prior experience with the flower and the movable ball in a way that went beyond the behaviours they had been trained to perform.

“Another important aspect is that our bees were fully naïve,” Loukola adds. “In many previous studies of insight-like problem-solving, the animals have had extensive experience with objects, test environments, or other problem-solving tasks. Here, the bees had never been trained to use the ball to reach the flower, and they had no previous experience with this kind of solution. We also designed the experiments to rule out simpler explanations such as accidental success, play behaviour, trial-and-error learning, or direct visual guidance.”

Importantly, the researchers designed several control experiments to rule out simpler explanations based on accidental solve or direct visual guidance.

In the more demanding tasks, the flower was hidden from the bees while they moved the ball, preventing them from simply steering toward a visible target. Even under these conditions, bees successfully moved the ball to the correct location.

“By analysing the bees’ behaviour across unusually stringent control experiments, we could show that they were not simply reacting to visual stimuli or moving the ball randomly,” says lead author Bhambore.

Watching the experiments unfold was often surprising even to researchers 

“One moment the animal is exploring seemingly without direction, and the next it performs a highly efficient sequence of actions leading directly to the solution,” says co-author Ece Nur Akmeşe from the University of Helsinki. “Watching the bees solving the task was genuinely fascinating.”

The study builds on growing evidence that bees possess surprisingly sophisticated cognitive abilities despite their tiny brains. Previous research has shown that bees can socially learn tool use, solve puzzle-like tasks, cooperate with one another, and flexibly adapt their behaviour.

However, the researchers emphasize that the findings do not imply human-like reasoning or consciousness in insects.

“We are not claiming that bees think like humans,” says Loukola, who currently works as a Senior Researcher at the University of Turku. “But our findings show that miniature brains can generate flexible solutions to novel problems in ways we are only beginning to understand.”

The results suggest that spontaneous, goal-directed problem-solving can emerge in animals with brains vastly smaller than those of vertebrates traditionally studied in insight research.

“For over a century, spontaneous object-based problem-solving has mostly been studied in vertebrates,” says Loukola. “Our study suggests insects may belong in that conversation too.”

The new study titled “Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees” by Akshaye A. Bhambore, Ece N. Akmeşe, Emma Häkkinen, Milla K. Jussila, Juha-Heikki Kantola, and Olli J. Loukola was published 4 June 2026 in the prestigious Science journal.

Learn more: Bumblebees use Lego blocks to build science and recognise the value of teamwork

 

A bumble bee standing on a ball beneath the artificial flower containing reward, illustrating the experimental solution. Image: Mikko Törmänen / University of Oulu

Credit

Image: Mikko Törmänen / University of Oulu

---

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ady1618 

Article Title

Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees

Article Publication Date

4-Jun-2026

Related News Releases

• Bumble bees show spontaneous problem-solving in study published in Science
  (University of Oulu, Finland)

 

This is how we found ‘The Heaven Sword,’ East Asia’s tallest tree after years of looking

Guest editorial by Dr Rebecca Chia-Chun Hsu, Professor Chi-Kuei Wang, and Dr Chung-Cheng Lee, authors of a new Frontiers in Forests and Global Change article describing their year-long endeavor to find Taiwan’s tallest tree

Frontiers

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

'The Heaven Sword', East Asia's tallest tree, towers above others at 84.1 meters.

view more 

Credit: Steven Pearce

Taiwan, historically known as Formosa, holds a secret deep within its rugged interior: it is one of the rare locations on our planet capable of supporting ‘giant’ trees—specimens that tower over 80 meters in height. Since 2014, our dedicated group, the ‘Taiwan tree seekers,’ has been on a mission to locate and document these sky-piercing giants. Our multidisciplinary team is a unique blend of professional tree climbers, ecologists, geologists, and remote sensing specialists.

In 2023, this persistence paid off: we located the reigning champion of the island’s forests: an 84.1-meter-tall Taiwania fir (Taiwania cryptomerioides). This massive tree currently holds the title of the tallest tree in all of East Asia. To the Indigenous Rukai people, these gargantuan firs are known by a much more poetic name, ‘The tree that hits the moon’.

The Landscape of the Island

To understand how these trees grow so large, one must look at the unique geography of Taiwan. The island covers an area of 36,000 square kilometers—roughly the same size as Switzerland. Taiwan is defined by its dramatic mountain systems. The island boasts a staggering 258 peaks that exceed 3,000 meters in elevation, with the highest point, Mt. Jade, reaching 3,952 meters.

It hosts an incredibly rich variety of plant life. It is estimated that 5,000 different species thrive here, creating a spectrum of ecosystems that range from steamy tropical rainforests at sea level to frigid alpine tundra at the highest peaks.

Approximately 60% of the island remains forested and is home to an estimated 950 million trees. While extensive industrial logging between 1912 and 1991 significantly depleted the island’s original primary forests, the incredibly steep terrain served as a natural fortress, preserving significant pockets of old-growth forest that were simply too difficult for loggers to reach.

The Search for the Hidden Giants

The formal quest began in August 2014, we, researchers from the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI), launched our first major expedition into the Cilan conservation area. Our specific target was a legendary group of trees known as the ‘Chilan Three Sisters’. These three giant Taiwania firs had been known to locals for years, but never had been scientifically measured or thoroughly documented.

We found the tallest of these giants reached 69.3 meters with a trunk diameter of nearly three meters. International attention followed in 2017 when professional climbers from ‘The Tree Projects’ in Australia traveled to Taiwan to fully photograph the Three Sisters, sharing the majesty of Taiwan's forests with the world.

Spurred by this success, our team set sight on a more remote region near Mt. Benya, rumored to hold the largest population of Taiwania firs. This area is located near Great Ghost Lake, a site considered sacred by Indigenous peoples. The journey was grueling, requiring four days of heavy hiking just to reach the site. This expedition proved to be a turning point; we realized that identifying the tallest trees from the ground was nearly impossible. Within the dense, multi-layered canopy of an old-growth forest, your eyes can easily deceive you. While we managed to climb a 71.7-meter tree during that trip, we knew we needed a more scientific way to scan the horizon.

A High-Tech Solution: LiDAR

With 950 million trees spread across deep, inaccessible valleys, we were essentially looking for a needle in a haystack. To modernize our search, we collaborated with remote sensing experts from National Cheng Kung University to utilize LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). LiDAR is a sophisticated 3D scanning technique that transmits laser pulses from an aircraft toward the ground. By measuring how long it takes for the light to bounce back, the system generates a highly detailed 3D map of the landscape, revealing the height of the trees.

A community effort

Due to Taiwan’s rugged, uneven terrain, the automatic algorithm often estimates trees to be much higher than they are, for example, when the tree is right next to a steep cliff. Human eyes are much better at recognizing these geological ‘tricks’ than the automatic algorithm, so in 2020 the project became a community effort. By having hundreds of Taiwanese citizens examined the LiDAR profile images, we could filter out tens of thousands of false leads. As it turned out, 93% of trees had been mismeasured by the automatic algorithm. Without the help of citizen scientists to sort through the mountain of data and identify the most likely candidates, we would have wasted years hiking to trees that were far shorter than they appeared on the map. By the end of 2022, this collaborative effort led to the publication of the ‘Taiwan Giant Tree Map,’ which officially identified 941 individual trees that exceeded 65 meters in height.

Finding the Champion

In January 2023, during the Lunar New Year holiday, we utilized the new map to target the most promising candidate for the title of ‘tallest tree’. This expedition was an endurance test, involved a 20-kilometer river tracing and two days of steep uphill hiking.

Once the climbers reached the crown and dropped a measuring tape from the very top to the ground, the height was revealed to be 84.1 meters. This tree, christened the ‘Heaven Sword of the Da’an River,’ was officially recorded as the tallest specimen in Taiwan and East Asia.

By early 2026, our ongoing efforts have led to the discovery and climbing of ten different Taiwania trees over 70 meters tall, two of which have broken the 80-meter barrier.

A Legacy for the World

The data from the Giant Tree Map also pointed the way to the exceptional ‘temples of giants’. Near Mt. Benya, we found a single hectare of forest containing 11 trees that each exceed 65 meters. Returning to the Great Ghost Lake area ten years after our initial expedition, we were left speechless by a ‘pure forest’ of approximately 30 giant Taiwania firs growing in a dense, ancient cluster.

These trees are vital for the planet’s health. In 2024, we and 15 citizen scientists conducted a detailed study of the ‘Tao Tree’ valley, which is home to the island's third-tallest tree, to learn how much carbon dioxide the forest scrubs from the atmosphere and stores in its wood.

The results were staggering: the total carbon density of the forest (even without counting the massive root systems) was 1,384.5 Mg/ha. This makes Taiwan’s giant forests some of the most carbon-dense environments in the entire world, comparable to the most famous old-growth forests on Earth. These ‘trees that hit the moon’ are not just natural wonders; they are essential guardians of the environment

---

Journal

Frontiers in Forests and Global Change

DOI

10.3389/ffgc.2026.1746112 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The Journey of Finding the Tallest Tree in Formosa Taiwan

Article Publication Date

5-Jun-2026

 

Taiwan’s giant forests some of the most carbon-dense environments in the entire world.

Credit

Steven Pearce

 

(a) Point cloud data of the 'Temples of Giants' near Mt. Benya, collected using a handheld laser scanner. (b) Zoomed view of the point cloud showing three individuals within the giant forest; the persons serve as a scale reference to convey tree height and canopy size.

Credit

Hsu et al., 2026