Wonderful Spiders and their Place in Nature - exploring the Lizard varieties by Tylan Berry

Thirty-one people thoroughly enjoyed an evening talk about spiders, learning a myriad of facts about so many spiders. Here are a few…there are at least 700 species of spider in the UK, most of them generalist predators so eating all sorts of invertebrates as prey. But they are more specific for habitat, and can be grouped into the sort of habitat they frequent, or the type of web they produce. Their behaviour varies as well, some jumping on to their prey rather than trapping in a web. The jumping spiders have excellent vision whereas most species of spider only detect shades of light and dark. They all spin silk but each spins several different types of silk for difference purposes, such as one type to cocoon their prey, another to catch it, another to cocoon their eggs. Many species of spider spin a line of silk which they use to fly into the atmosphere. These flying spiders are important food source for high flying birds such as swifts. In fact all spiders are an important source of nutrition for birds. No spiders in Britain have a bite that would harm us unless we have an allergy to the venom in their bite. The venom is effective at paralysing their prey.

Spider populations are changing, sometimes apparently due to global warming and climate change. Monitoring is important so we can interpret what is happening. They seem to be more resilient to challenges which other invertebrates face, but as all insects they are killed by insecticides, and changing their landscape can wipe out the species who are habitat specific. It is not known how the abundance of spiders is suffering, particularly those which are airborne, and this would be a very good study. Where insects are scarce spiders are likely to have enough prey in springtails found in the soil.

On the Lizard we have some very rare species of spider, mostly found on rocky cliffs and coastline grazed short by animals. These include the Nose Gallows Spider, Golden Lantern Spider and Western Ground Spider. By lifting up rocks and stones, Tylan has found many rare species. These particular types are threatened if gorse and heather is allowed to grow, and the best habitat is where horses and cattle have foraged. (But plenty of other species benefit from gorse and shrub.)

We were encouraged to record our sitings with IRecord.

The talk hosted by Wildlife Groundswell as a fringe event for their annual wildlife conference 2024.