The first evidence of colonial behaviour in two common spider species and probably represents the largest spider web in the world.
According to Euro News, researchers have discovered more than 111,000 spiders thriving in what appears to be the world's largest spider web, deep inside a pitch-black cave on the Albanian-Greek border.
The "extraordinary" colony consists of a colossal web in a permanently dark zone of the cave, according to a study published 17 October in the journal Subterranean Biology.
The web stretches 106 square meters along the wall of a narrow, low-ceilinged passage near the cave entrance. It is a jumble of thousands of individual, funnel-shaped tissues, the researchers noted.
This is the first evidence of colonial behaviour in two common spider species and likely represents the largest spider web in the world, said lead study author István Urák, associate professor of biology at the Hungarian Sapientia University of Transylvania in Romania.
The megalopolis of spiders is located in the Cave of Sulphur, a cave with a sulphuric-acid hollow formed by the oxidation of hydrogen sulphide in the groundwater.
While researchers uncovered tantalising new information about the Sulphur Cave spider colony, they were not the first to see the giant web.
Speleologists from the Czech Speleological Society discovered it in 2022 during an expedition to Vromoner Canyon.
A team of scientists then visited the cave in 2024, collecting samples of the web that Urák analysed before embarking on his own expedition to Sulphur Cave.
