The Unseen Fathers of Harvestmen: What Citizen Science Reveals About Parental Care A recent study on harvestmen, a group of arachnids that resemble spiders, has shed new light on the evolution of parental care.
Researchers have more than doubled the known cases of egg guarding behavior in harvestmen by combining nearly 30 years of field data with observations submitted through iNaturalist, revealing a complex history that challenges our understanding of paternal care.
For too long, scientists have assumed that parental care is an exclusively maternal domain, based on studies showing females are primary caregivers in most insect species.