Who's the daddy? Scientists left baffled by find of cave-dwelling daddy longlegs with FOOT-LONG leg span

Huge harvestman found by German researcher exploring caves in Laos

Specialists unable to classify beast because of gaps in local taxonomy

The same region is home to a range of other massive arthropods



Very long legs: This harvestman with a phenomenal foot-long leg span was discovered by a German researcher exploring caves in Laos

A daddy longlegs with an incredible foot-long leg span has been discovered - and left scientists baffled as to how to classify it.

Dr Peter Jäger from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, found the collossal harvestman while exploring caves during a trip in Laos.

It is one of the largest representatives of the entire order discovered anywhere in the world, but a lack of researchers with expertise in the taxonomy of local wildlife mean it has as yet escaped definition.

Dr Jäger, an arachnologist, had been visiting the south-east Asian nation to film a documentary when he made the discovery.

'In between takes I collected spiders from the caves in the southern province of Khammouan,' he said. 'In one of the caves I discovered a harvestman that was absolutely huge.'

The leg span of the gigantic male harvestman was more than 33cm (nearly 1.1ft). That's just a centimetre shy of the current record leg span for a species from South America.

However, when the time came to sort and label his find Dr Jäger, who mainly deals with huntsman spiders, found himself stumped. Harvestmen are arachnids, but they are not spiders.

Even the specialist he consulted, Ana Lucia Tourinho from the National Institute for Research of the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil, could only conclude that it is probably the genus Gagrella in the Sclerosomatidae family.

'It’s a shame we can’t identify such an exceptional discovery correctly,' Dr Jäger said. 'We haven’t dealt with these and related genera from China and neighbouring South East Asia before.

'Specialists are also unavailable due to the fact that descriptive taxonomy is no longer the main focus of research funding.'

The harvestmen of the Sclerosomatidae family can be found in virtually every habitat and they constitute an ecologically very important predator group in the natural food chain.

Once properly classified and investigated, the creatures could serve as an indicator of the ecological state of the natural and cultural scenery.

These long-legged creatures are also of interest to behavioural scientists and evolutionary biologists. For example, during courtship the male presents a nuptial gift to the female to demonstrate his fitness.

Only when the female accepts it do they mate.

Whose a pretty boy then? Attempts to define the arachnid have baffled researchers. Gaps in the taxonomy of local wildlife mean it could only be classified as probably the genus Gagrella in the Sclerosomatidae family Dr Jäger would now like to do a detailed case study of the Sclerosomatidae family along with his Brazilian colleague and in collaboration with other scientists in Germany, China and Japan.



THREE KINDS OF DADDY LONG LEGS The term 'daddy longlegs' can actually refer to three different kinds of creepy crawlies, depending on which part of the world you are in:

The daddy longlegs most of us in the UK are familiar with are actually crane flies, like the one pictured right , a species of winged insects belonging to the family Tipulidae;



Another kind of creature popularly known as daddy longlegs - especially in Australia - are Pholcidae, a family of spiders also commonly known as cellar spiders;



The third kind of daddy longlegs, of which Dr Jäger 's Laotian specimen is an example, are Opiliones, an order of arachnids also commonly known as harvestmen.

Their findings should then be applicable to other groups and regions.

'We want to avoid a situation in future where we again lack the experts to classify such unique creatures,' said Dr Jäger.



Meanwhile, Laos has turned out to be a veritable land of giants.

Other similarly huge arthropods found in the same region include the Laotian huntsman spider Heteropoda maxima with a leg span of up to 30cm; the whip scorpion Typopeltis magnificus with a span of 26cm; and the predatory centipede Thereuopoda longicornis with a total span of almost 40cm.

All these organisms are more or less closely linked to caves in these karst areas.

