A species of spider that usually travels no further than a few feet from where it was hatched, likely made an epic sea journey on a "land raft" from South Africa to call Australia home, a study said Thursday. The Australian trapdoor spider, known scientifically as Moggridgea rainbow, is only found on Kangaroo Island off the south Australian coast and lives a sedentary land-based lifestyle, rarely moving far. Research in the journal PLOS ONE said DNA sequences shows it actually belongs to a genus of trapdoor spiders otherwise found only in South Africa and split from its closest relatives between two and 16 million years ago.
Idle spiders' epic sea journey from Africa to Australia: study
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2017