The Illegal Trade Of Tarantulas - Bio-piracy in Malaysia?

A new spider species - Birupes simoroxigorum - was described in the February issue of The Journal of the British Tarantula Society, by arachnologists Ray Gabriel and Danniella Sherwood. The species is native to Sarawak, and the three European collectors who provided the specimens to the arachnologists are said to have captured the animals in the forests of Sarawak, and transported them to Europe. But the Forest Department of Sarawak says they lacked permits to collect or export wildlife. Is this a case of biopiracy? We speak about the growing illegal trade of tarantulas and more, with Dr Law Yao Hua, an insect behavioural ecologist and a freelance science writer on ecology and evolution who highlighted this case in an article in Science.