Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Whilst going about my work day this Monday, I happened across this Wild Spood. She might be difficult to identify in this photograph, as she is a very dark brown - almost black - Steatoda species of spider. My first thought was a false widow, but she seems a little too dark for that. Regardless, what we have here is a very defensive mama spider who is protecting her egg sac. After running towards me once I picked her home up, she turned around and ran back to her sac - putting several long legs over it to keep it safe. It's okay Mama, I'm not going to touch your brood. But what this does do is give me the chance to talk about one of the aspects of my work - insect sampling. This spider has unfortunately made it's nest inside the cover that I use to test trigger the moth light trap that I use at work. I'm not sure whether this is more unfortunate for me, as it leaves me open to getting bitten whenever I test my moth trap, or the spider, who is going to be disturbed...

Time for another stab at idnetifying a wild mystery spider! My partner has a car with a glass roof, and one day when we were parked in the countryside, this little guy wandered across it. This was the only photo I was able to get. Identifying this guy was a bit of a stab in the dark. For starters, he was outside of the car whilst I was in it, and beyond that - I only had the underside of him to go on. I am reasonably sure he is a male based on the large "blobs" at the end of his pedipalps. They would look almost like boxing gloves from above. Still, I do think I've got it - based on his colour, the arrangement of his legs, and his size (approximately 1cm), I believe this guy to be a green huntsman spider, Micrommata virescens. Males of this species range from 7 to 10 mm long, and while the females are entirely green, the males have the vibrant red and yellow striped abdomens. As you can see from the photo I took, there is a reddish hue shining through from above the...

I guess it's the season for wandering spoods, because I found this one in my bath today! I belieave it's Steatoda nobilis - commonly known as the False Widow spider: I am not overly fond of these spiders - I have heard too many cases of them biting my friends and family. My partner had an exceptionally nasty bite on his arm recently, which he got while cleaning his garage. And yes, I know that it's not an especially bad bite - akin to a wasp sring, apparently - but I don't even like to be bitten by a mosquito! These spiders have venom potent enough to allow them to feed on pipistrelle bats, so when I pulled this lady out of my bathtub (I am assuming she is female as I didn't notice the swollen pedipalps that a male would have) I made sure to not use any fingers. She was gently scooped into a cardboard tube and dropped out of the window. As females can live up to five years, I imagine I may see her again - whether I am aware of it or not.

I had a visitor! My first wild UK jumping Spood! I was finally finsihing off setting up my crafting room/wman's cave/Spoodoir, when I happened to look up and see this tiny little black speck making its way across the door frame. From the way it was moving it was clear that whatever it was, it was definitely a jumping spider, so I grabbed a little container to get a closer look. As you can see from the photos, she was absolutely tiny! About 4mm long, front to back. I was hoping to identify her species, but I couldn't see clearly enough to tell any distinguishing features. So I gave her a fruit fly to make sure she was well fed, and then I put her in a warm dark place (next to my other spoods) in preparation for bringing her to work with me. Before this, I was under the impression that we only had one species of jumping spider in the UK - The zebra jumper. I knew that this little critter was not a zebra jumper - a zebra jumper has black and white stripes on its body, as yo...

The mystery spider in the new labs has appeared yet again. And I have still completely failed to identify it. I can tell you it's a male, and that's as far as I have got. This time, I attempted to take a photograph of the spiders eye arrangement, but I was foiled by the angle that the spider was sitting on the doorframe, and the poor quality of my phone camera. I am waiting on a delivery of feeder insects this week. I have half a mind to go into the lab with a pair of forceps and offer the Mystery Spood something to eat. He may not eat, as mature males usually have only one thing on their minds, but I can try. If anyone more knowledgeable than me knows what kind of spider this might be, please comment to let me know! He is intriguing me.

So, the side effect of getting into spiders has been that whenever I see a spider into the "wild", I want to know exactly what it is. I found this spider on the doorframe of one of my labs, and try as I might, I could not ID it for the life of me. I'm reaching out to some spider groups in the hope that someone there knows, but in the meantime, here's a wild spood! In reality, the stripe down his head was yellow, and the black marks on his abdomen were more blue. I wish I had taken a photo of his eye arrangement, as that could have at least narrowed down what spider family he was from, but I didn't think of it at the time.