BENGALURU: The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Friday released a book which will make it easier to identify Indian spiders. Renowned scientist Prof Rohini Balakrishnan launched ‘On the Web with Spiders: A Handbook with Field Notes’, authored by IISc faculty Dr Abhijeet Bayani, a conservation biologist and science writer. The book details Dr Bayani’s work for the last 15 years, documenting various species of Indian spiders and how to identify them.
“There is no comprehensive guide to identify spiders that I could find, especially when I first become obsessed with them around 2003. This is only the third book on spiders in India. There are around 400 pages of illustrations, photographs and text, with pictures taken by me on the IISc campus,” he said.
Dr Milind Watve, Deenanath Mangehskar Hospital and Research Centre Pune, who was an advisor to Dr Bayani said the book was important in promoting citizen science. “Science needs to come out of the academia culture and embrace the mindset of citizen science, and for it to flourish, more books like these need to come out,” he said.