In a significant discovery, scientists from Odisha have profiled a new species of ‘happy-face spider’ in the western Himalayas of India, adding to the rich Araneae diversity of the country.

The new Himalayan spider species from the ‘Theridiidae’ family has been discovered by scientists Devi Priyadarshini and Ashirwad Tripathy from the Makku, Tala, and Jagpura region of Rudraprayag district, close to the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttarakhand. It has been named ‘Theridion himalayana’.

The species has been found to be polymorphic in both sexes and has 32 different morphs that exhibit patterns of a smiling face with dots in colours of red, black, and white arranged differently.

A similar looking species, the Hawaiian happy-face spider (Theridion grallator), is endemic to the Hawaiian island in the USA. The scientists, however, noted a genetic variation of around 8.5 percent observed in the Hawaiian happy-face spider, indicating that Theridion himalayana is a separately evolved species in Asia with multiple morphs.

The spider also appears to be quite different in its evolutionary history from its close relatives found in Europe, Asia, and North America, as stated in their research paper, ‘On the discovery of a new polymorphic happy-face spider (Araneae, Theridiidae) from the Western Himalayas, India, with notes on its natural history’, published in Pensoft’s Evolutionary Systematics journal recently.

Although the new species closely resembles Theridion grallator in overall body shape and colour pattern, scientists said it can still be easily distinguished by its reproductive features. Theridion himalayana can be identified by the unique shape of its reproductive structures.