. 2022 Mar 28;9(1):109.

doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01197-6.

An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites

Stefano Mammola^{1

2}, Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte^#^{3

4}, Valeria Arabesky^{5

6}, Diego Alejandro Barrales-Alcalá⁷, Aimee Lynn Barrion-Dupo⁸, Marco Antonio Benamú^{9

10

11}, Tharina L Bird^{12

13}, Maria Bogomolova¹⁴, Pedro Cardoso³, Maria Chatzaki¹⁵, Ren-Chung Cheng¹⁶, Tien-Ai Chu¹⁶, Leticia M Classen-Rodríguez¹⁷, Iva Čupić¹⁸, Naufal Urfi Dhiya'ulhaq¹⁹, André-Philippe Drapeau Picard²⁰, Hisham K El-Hennawy²¹, Mert Elverici²², Caroline S Fukushima³, Zeana Ganem^{23

24}, Efrat Gavish-Regev²³, Naledi T Gonnye²⁵, Axel Hacala²⁶, Charles R Haddad²⁷, Thomas Hesselberg²⁸, Tammy Ai Tian Ho²⁹, Thanakorn Into³⁰, Marco Isaia³¹, Dharmaraj Jayaraman³², Nanguei Karuaera³³, Rajashree Khalap³⁴, Kiran Khalap³⁴, Dongyoung Kim³⁵, Tuuli Korhonen³, Simona Kralj-Fišer³⁶, Heidi Land³⁷, Shou-Wang Lin³⁷, Sarah Loboda³⁸, Elizabeth Lowe³⁹, Yael Lubin^{6

40}, Alejandro Martínez⁴¹, Zingisile Mbo²⁷, Marija Miličić^{3

42}, Grace Mwende Kioko⁴³, Veronica Nanni^{31

44}, Yusoff Norma-Rashid⁴⁵, Daniel Nwankwo⁴⁶, Christina J Painting⁴⁷, Aleck Pang⁴⁸, Paolo Pantini⁴⁹, Martina Pavlek^{18

50}, Richard Pearce⁵¹, Booppa Petcharad³⁰, Julien Pétillon^{26

52}, Onjaherizo Christian Raberahona⁵³, Joni A Saarinen³, Laura Segura-Hernández⁵⁴, Lenka Sentenská⁵⁵, Gabriele Uhl³⁷, Leilani Walker^{56

57}, Charles M Warui⁵⁸, Konrad Wiśniewski⁵⁹, Alireza Zamani⁶⁰, Catherine Scott^#³⁸, Angela Chuang^#^{61

62}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. stefano.mammola@cnr.it.
² Molecular Ecology Group (MEG), Water Research Institute, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRSA), Largo Tonolli 50, 28922, Verbania Pallanza, Italy. stefano.mammola@cnr.it.
³ Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁴ CE3C - Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes / Azorean Biodiversity Group and Universidade dos Açores, Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, Portugal.
⁵ Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, Beersheba, Israel.
⁶ Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, Beersheba, Israel.
⁷ Colección Nacional de Arácnidos, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico.
⁸ Environmental Biology Division, Institute of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences and Museum of Natural History, University of the Philippines Los Banos, 4031, Los Baños, Philippines.
⁹ Centro Universitario de Rivera, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
¹⁰ Lab. Ecotoxicología de Artrópodos Terrestres, Centro Univeritario de Rivera, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
¹¹ Laboratorio Ecología del Comportamiento, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas clemente Estable (IIBCE), Montevideo, Uruguay.
¹² Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, PO Box 4197, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa.
¹³ Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, 0028, South Africa.
¹⁴ Freelance translator, Verbania Pallanza, Italy.
¹⁵ Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece.
¹⁶ Department of Life sciences, National Chung Hsing University, No.145 Xingda Rd., South Dist., Taichung City, 402204, Taiwan.
¹⁷ Department of Biology, Macelwane Hall, 3507 Laclede Avenue, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, 63103, USA.
¹⁸ Croatian Biospeleological Society, Rooseveltov trg 6, Zagreb, Croatia.
¹⁹ Program Sarjana, Fakultas Biologi, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
²⁰ Insectarium de Montréal, Espace pour la vie, 4101, rue Sherbrooke Est, Montréal, Québec, H1X 2B2, Canada.
²¹ Serket, Arachnid Collection of Egypt (ACE), Cairo, Egypt.
²² Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University, Faculty of Science and Arts, Biology Department, 24002, Erzincan, Turkey.
²³ The National Natural History Collections, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel.
²⁴ The Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel.
²⁵ Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Palapye, Botswana.
²⁶ UMR CNRS 6553 Ecobio, Université de Rennes, 263 Avenue du Gal Leclerc, CS 74205, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France.
²⁷ Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of the Free State, P.O. Box 339, Bloemfontein, 9300, South Africa.
²⁸ Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, United Kingdom.
²⁹ Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore, 117543, Singapore.
³⁰ Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Thammasat University, Rangsit, Pathum Thani, 12121, Thailand.
³¹ Dept. of Life Science and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Via Accademia Albertina, 13 - 10123, Torino, Italy.
³² Unit of Conservation Biology, Department of Zoology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, 641046, Tamilnadu, India.
³³ National Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia.
³⁴ 5A Sagar Sangeet, SBS Marg, Mumbai, 400005, India.
³⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, Ajou University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
³⁶ Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Jovan Hadži Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
³⁷ University of Greifswald, Zoological Institute and Museum, General and Systematic Zoology, Loitzerstrasse 26, 17489, Greifswald, Germany.
³⁸ Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, 21 111 Lakeshore Road, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, H9X 3V9, Canada.
³⁹ Department of Biological Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2122, Australia.
⁴⁰ Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, University in Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel.
⁴¹ Molecular Ecology Group (MEG), Water Research Institute, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRSA), Largo Tonolli 50, 28922, Verbania Pallanza, Italy.
⁴² BioSense Institute - Research Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems, University of Novi Sad, Dr Zorana Đinđića 1, 21000, Novi Sad, Serbia.
⁴³ National Museums of Kenya, Museum Hill, P.O. BOX 40658- 00100, Nairobi, Kenya.
⁴⁴ School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Science, Technology and Society Department, 25100, Pavia, Italy.
⁴⁵ Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
⁴⁶ Department of Animal and Environmental Biology, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.
⁴⁷ Te Aka Mātuatua School of Science, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, 3240, New Zealand.
⁴⁸ Independent researcher, Toronto, Canada.
⁴⁹ Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali "E. Caffi", Piazza Cittadella, 10, I-24129, Bergamo, Italy.
⁵⁰ Ruđer Bošković Institute, Bijenička cesta 54, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia.
⁵¹ Biodiversity Research Laboratory, Moreton Morrell, Warwickshire College University Centre, Warwickshire, United Kingdom.
⁵² Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
⁵³ Department of Entomology, University of Antananrivo, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
⁵⁴ School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68588, United States.
⁵⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada.
⁵⁶ Natural Sciences, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Parnell, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand.
⁵⁷ Te Pūnaha Matatini, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁵⁸ Murang'a University of Technology, Department of Physical & Biological Sciences, P.O.Box 75-10200, Murang'a, Kenya.
⁵⁹ Institute of Biology and Earth Sciences, Pomeranian University in Słupsk, Arciszewskiego 22a, 76-200, Słupsk, Poland.
⁶⁰ Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit, FI-20014, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
⁶¹ Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.
⁶² Department of Entomology and Nematology, Citrus Research and Education Center, University of Florida, Lake Alfred, Florida, USA.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 35347145
PMCID: PMC8960780
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01197-6

An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites

Stefano Mammola et al. Sci Data. 2022.

. 2022 Mar 28;9(1):109.

doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01197-6.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. stefano.mammola@cnr.it.
² Molecular Ecology Group (MEG), Water Research Institute, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRSA), Largo Tonolli 50, 28922, Verbania Pallanza, Italy. stefano.mammola@cnr.it.
³ Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁴ CE3C - Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes / Azorean Biodiversity Group and Universidade dos Açores, Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, Portugal.
⁵ Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, Beersheba, Israel.
⁶ Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, Beersheba, Israel.
⁷ Colección Nacional de Arácnidos, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico.
⁸ Environmental Biology Division, Institute of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences and Museum of Natural History, University of the Philippines Los Banos, 4031, Los Baños, Philippines.
⁹ Centro Universitario de Rivera, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
¹⁰ Lab. Ecotoxicología de Artrópodos Terrestres, Centro Univeritario de Rivera, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
¹¹ Laboratorio Ecología del Comportamiento, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas clemente Estable (IIBCE), Montevideo, Uruguay.
¹² Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, PO Box 4197, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa.
¹³ Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, 0028, South Africa.
¹⁴ Freelance translator, Verbania Pallanza, Italy.
¹⁵ Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece.
¹⁶ Department of Life sciences, National Chung Hsing University, No.145 Xingda Rd., South Dist., Taichung City, 402204, Taiwan.
¹⁷ Department of Biology, Macelwane Hall, 3507 Laclede Avenue, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, 63103, USA.
¹⁸ Croatian Biospeleological Society, Rooseveltov trg 6, Zagreb, Croatia.
¹⁹ Program Sarjana, Fakultas Biologi, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
²⁰ Insectarium de Montréal, Espace pour la vie, 4101, rue Sherbrooke Est, Montréal, Québec, H1X 2B2, Canada.
²¹ Serket, Arachnid Collection of Egypt (ACE), Cairo, Egypt.
²² Erzincan Binali Yıldırım University, Faculty of Science and Arts, Biology Department, 24002, Erzincan, Turkey.
²³ The National Natural History Collections, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel.
²⁴ The Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 9190401, Israel.
²⁵ Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Palapye, Botswana.
²⁶ UMR CNRS 6553 Ecobio, Université de Rennes, 263 Avenue du Gal Leclerc, CS 74205, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France.
²⁷ Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of the Free State, P.O. Box 339, Bloemfontein, 9300, South Africa.
²⁸ Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, United Kingdom.
²⁹ Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore, 117543, Singapore.
³⁰ Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Thammasat University, Rangsit, Pathum Thani, 12121, Thailand.
³¹ Dept. of Life Science and Systems Biology, University of Torino, Via Accademia Albertina, 13 - 10123, Torino, Italy.
³² Unit of Conservation Biology, Department of Zoology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, 641046, Tamilnadu, India.
³³ National Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia.
³⁴ 5A Sagar Sangeet, SBS Marg, Mumbai, 400005, India.
³⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, Ajou University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
³⁶ Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Jovan Hadži Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
³⁷ University of Greifswald, Zoological Institute and Museum, General and Systematic Zoology, Loitzerstrasse 26, 17489, Greifswald, Germany.
³⁸ Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, 21 111 Lakeshore Road, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, H9X 3V9, Canada.
³⁹ Department of Biological Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2122, Australia.
⁴⁰ Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, University in Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel.
⁴¹ Molecular Ecology Group (MEG), Water Research Institute, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRSA), Largo Tonolli 50, 28922, Verbania Pallanza, Italy.
⁴² BioSense Institute - Research Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems, University of Novi Sad, Dr Zorana Đinđića 1, 21000, Novi Sad, Serbia.
⁴³ National Museums of Kenya, Museum Hill, P.O. BOX 40658- 00100, Nairobi, Kenya.
⁴⁴ School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Science, Technology and Society Department, 25100, Pavia, Italy.
⁴⁵ Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
⁴⁶ Department of Animal and Environmental Biology, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.
⁴⁷ Te Aka Mātuatua School of Science, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, 3240, New Zealand.
⁴⁸ Independent researcher, Toronto, Canada.
⁴⁹ Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali "E. Caffi", Piazza Cittadella, 10, I-24129, Bergamo, Italy.
⁵⁰ Ruđer Bošković Institute, Bijenička cesta 54, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia.
⁵¹ Biodiversity Research Laboratory, Moreton Morrell, Warwickshire College University Centre, Warwickshire, United Kingdom.
⁵² Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
⁵³ Department of Entomology, University of Antananrivo, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
⁵⁴ School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68588, United States.
⁵⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada.
⁵⁶ Natural Sciences, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Parnell, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand.
⁵⁷ Te Pūnaha Matatini, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁵⁸ Murang'a University of Technology, Department of Physical & Biological Sciences, P.O.Box 75-10200, Murang'a, Kenya.
⁵⁹ Institute of Biology and Earth Sciences, Pomeranian University in Słupsk, Arciszewskiego 22a, 76-200, Słupsk, Poland.
⁶⁰ Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit, FI-20014, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
⁶¹ Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA.
⁶² Department of Entomology and Nematology, Citrus Research and Education Center, University of Florida, Lake Alfred, Florida, USA.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 35347145
PMCID: PMC8960780
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01197-6

Abstract

Mass media plays an important role in the construction and circulation of risk perception associated with animals. Widely feared groups such as spiders frequently end up in the spotlight of traditional and social media. We compiled an expert-curated global database on the online newspaper coverage of human-spider encounters over the past ten years (2010-2020). This database includes information about the location of each human-spider encounter reported in the news article and a quantitative characterisation of the content-location, presence of photographs of spiders and bites, number and type of errors, consultation of experts, and a subjective assessment of sensationalism. In total, we collected 5348 unique news articles from 81 countries in 40 languages. The database refers to 211 identified and unidentified spider species and 2644 unique human-spider encounters (1121 bites and 147 as deadly bites). To facilitate data reuse, we explain the main caveats that need to be made when analysing this database and discuss research ideas and questions that can be explored with it.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

**Fig. 1**
The potential of news articles as a source of data. This database offers a quantitative baseline to pursue research on the human-dimensions of spiders and their representation in the media. This research may include answering questions related to the cultural component of spider conservation, evaluation of people’s perceptions of spiders via opinion mining techniques, and generation of ecological insights, among others. Original illustration by Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte.

**Fig. 2**
Temporal distribution of unique news articles. (a) Annual distribution of news articles by type of event (partial data for 2020). (b) Monthly distribution of news articles (cumulative of all years) in the northern hemisphere. (c) Monthly distribution of news articles (cumulative of all years) in the southern hemisphere—darker colours highlight months with the highest numbers of news articles.

**Fig. 3**
Geographical coverage of the human-spider encounters in the database. (a) Global distribution of event localities reported in the media report; due to the proximity of several localities, most points appear superimposed. (b) Latitudinal distribution of events. (c) News coverage by spider families. (d) News coverage by spider genera. Danger symbol marks genera with species of medical importance. In c–d, for the four most abundant families, colours represent families.

**Fig. 4**
Content of news articles by continent. (a) Frequency of expert consultation in news articles (any type of expert). (b) Frequency of spider expert consultation (arachnologists, entomologists and similar) in news articles. (c) Frequency of errors in news articles (any type of error). (d) Frequency of sensationalistic versus non-sensationalistic news articles.

**Fig. 5**
Usage of words in sensationalistic (a) versus non-sensationalistic (b) news articles titles. Word Clouds illustrating the most frequently used 50 words in the titles of English news articles. Common words (stop_words *sensu* ref. ) and the terms used for online searching (e.g., ‘spider’, ‘bite’, ‘sting’, species names) are excluded from the analysis. Text size is proportional to the frequency of each word. Warm colours highlight words that appeal to emotions and are often associated with sensationalistic content. Original silhouettes by Irene Frigo, reproduced from ref. .

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

1. Gerdes ABM, Uhl G, Alpers GW. Spiders are special: fear and disgust evoked by pictures of arthropods. Evol. Hum. Behav. 2009;30:66–73.
1. Mammola S, Nanni V, Pantini P, Isaia M. Media framing of spiders may exacerbate arachnophobic sentiments. People Nat. 2020;2:1145–1157.
1. Vetter RS, Visscher PK. Oh, what a Tangled web we weave: The anatomy of an internet spider hoax. Am. Entomol. 2000;46:221–224.
1. Vetter RS. Arachnophobic entomologists: When two more legs makes a big difference. Am. Entomol. 2013;59:169–175.
1. Mammola S, Michalik P, Hebets EA, Isaia M. Record breaking achievements by spiders and the scientists who study them. PeerJ. 2017;5:e3972. - PMC - PubMed

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An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites

Affiliations

An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

References

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Medical

Miscellaneous