Britain`s Spiders – A Field Guide (WILDGuides of Britain & Europe, 21)

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False widows attract attention as being one of the few British spiders capable of delivering a venomous bite. However, they will only do so if they are trapped or squashed, often in clothing. With warmer weather, we keep our doors and windows open longer into spider season, and let more of the wandering males in. Jones, D., Ledoux, J-C. & Emerit, M. 2001. Guide des araignées et des opilions d’Europe. Lonay, Switzerland: Delachaux et Niestlé. Huge and dark chocolate brown, this is edged with two contrasting yellow-white stripes down sides of abdomen; legs are paler. Common in lowland wetlands, fens and boggy upland moors, it walks on water. Head and body up to 20mm long. Giant house spider (Tegenaria gigantea) Giant house spiders love to live in the dark corners of your house, like under the sofa./Credit: Darkone/CC BY-SA 2.0 - Darkone. Image used under license: CC BY-SA 2.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Darkone They aren't bigger, and there aren't really more of them. What we can say is that because of the weather and our windows and doors remaining open, there are more observations of some of the larger species that enter our homes,' says Hine.

However, the turn to colder and wetter weather will stop insects flying and stop the garden spiders feeding. False widow spiders Reports of false widow spiders continue to rise. The term false widow actually describes several species of spider, but the one that gains the most attention is Steatoda nobilis, the noble false widow spider.

Gnaphosidae - Ground spiders

British Spiders a field guide is one of the latest publications in the popular WILDGuides series. Other books in the series can be explored here False widow spider bites have been a hot topic in recent years, along with reports of bumper crops of house and garden spiders, and news that city spiders are getting fatter. Spider season: looking for love There are around 650 species of spider in the UK, ranging from those with a leg span of just a couple of millimetres, to the 12cm leg span of the cardinal spider. Spiders are predators, and they use an impressive pair of fangs to catch prey, and to introduce venom. All spiders have fangs but not all spiders have fangs that are able to pierce human skin. Consequently, there are relatively few UK species that are able to bite us in any meaningful way.

This Opticron Hand Lens contains a high quality 23mm doublet lens, made of glass and provides excellent distortion-free magnification. The 10x magnification is recommended for general observations and this magnifier is the one most commonly recommended for all types of fieldwork.This major identification guide to 450 species of spider is designed for easy use. Each species is described in detail and illustrated in colour, including common colour variants and differences between the sexes. General family features are also described, with information on behaviour and web-making, including a key to spiders’ webs. Britain’s only subaquatic spider is reddish brown and grey, streaked, but appears silver because of an air bubble over its abdomen. It makes an air-filled silk-stranded diving bell in pond and stream weeds. Head and body 15mm. False widow ( Steatoda nobilis) According to the National History Museum, the false widow spider was first recorded in Britain in the 1870s, 'likely a stowaway on cargo ships from its native Madeira and Canary Islands.'/Credit: Getty Legg, G. & Jones, R. E. 1988. Pseudoscorpions. Synopses of the British Fauna. Shrewsbury: Field Studies Council. As with its sister volume on harvestmen, this provides information on structure and biology of the British pseudoscorpions as well as keys and distribution maps.

Most species of spider in the UK live for a year or perhaps two. Those that live indoors with fewer predators are more likely to live for two or three years. The garden spider is the UK's most common orb web spider/Credit: Getty How many eyes do spiders have? A comprehensively updated edition of an identification guide that was named a Guardian Best Nature Book of the Year.

What can you tell us about the different kinds of webs that can be found in the UK and the species that they indicate?

Large house spider ( Tegenaria species) males start to move around seeking out more sedentary females. Although more commonly seen inside houses, they live perfectly happily outdoors too. Earlier in the year zebra spiders ( Salticus scenicus) lurk on sunny fences and walls. These are jumping spiders that leap on their prey rather than ensnaring them in webs. They have excellent binocular vision and can estimate how far away the prey is before pouncing.

Corinnidae - Ant-like sac spiders

The Museum's Identification and Advisory Service gets a lot of reports of house spiders, the generic name given to a group of large, long-legged spiders in the groups Tegenaria and Eratigena. Males can have a leg span up to 120 millimetres, and they are usually brown and hairy with dull stripes on the body. Bee L., Oxford, G. & Smith, H. 2020. Britain’s spiders (2 nd edn). WILDGuides. Princeton: Princeton University Press. A guide to all 38 of the British families, focusing on spiders that can be identified in the field. Illustrated with a remarkable collection of photographs, it is designed to be accessible to a wide audience, including those new to spider identification. This book combines information on features that can be seen with the naked eye or a hand lens with additional evidence from webs, egg-sacs, behaviour, phenology, habitats and distributions. Individual accounts cover 404 species - all of Britain’s ‘macro’ spiders and the larger money spiders, with the limitations to field identification clearly explained.