A new and rare species of giant orb web spider has been discovered in Africa and Madagascar. Researchers describe Nephila komaci as the largest web spinning spider known to science. Only the females of this groups of species are giants, with a leg span of up to 12cm; the male spiders are tiny by comparison. Scientists say the female spiders are capable of spinning webs that reach up to 1m in diameter. The new spider was identified by Matjaz Kuntner, a biologist from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and his colleague Jonathan Coddington, from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. It did not match any described species, said Dr Kuntner. He and his colleague, Jonathan Coddington, from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, fear the rare spider might be endangered.
