Blue is one of the rarest colors in nature—fewer than one in ten flowers are blue, and only about 4 percent of all 900 known tarantula species have a blue coloration
Electric Blue Tarantula Discovered in Thailand
…and, of course, collectors will drive it to near extinction now.
But there are no hard data to prove this. Why not? There are likely a number of reasons, but one possible contributor keeps coming up in my conversations with arachnologists: People really do not like spiders. Even among the least popular animals on Earth, they are especially reviled. One recent study found that people think spiders are one of the absolute worst combinations of scary and disgusting, beating out vipers, wasps, maggots, and cockroaches.
Spiders Might Be Quietly Disappearing
A good piece on getting people to bioblitz spiders. As mentioned, there are some challenges.