Researchers Studying Daddy Longlegs' Genes Created A 'Daddy Shortlegs'

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/ [login to see] /daddy-longlegs-genes-genetics-daddy-shortlegs-arachnid
To get an idea of why scientists would want to study daddy longlegs, try playing a game of "One of these things is not like the others" the next time you see one.

"If you watch a daddy longlegs move, it will effectively walk on just three pairs of its legs," said Guilherme Gainett, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The remaining pair of legs, he adds, wave around in the air, probing the arachnid's surroundings.

And when they find something interesting, they can grab it.

"One of the unique things about daddy longlegs is the ability to coil the tips of their legs, achieved by the subdivision into dozens of small articulating pieces called tarsomeres," Vanessa L. González, a computational genomics scientist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, told NPR.

You can think of tarsomeres as similar to the segment between the knuckles on your fingers, González said.

A single leg can have dozens of tarsomeres, making it incredibly versatile. To discover how the arachnid developed this ability, González, Gainett and their fellow researchers sequenced the daddy longlegs' genome — and eventually, they succeeded in creating a daddy shortlegs, by manipulating its genes.