The Lyons Share

Before I found myself sucked into the inescapable gravitational pull of Black Hole at Burton Pond, I headed to Iping Common to MAX OUT ON MY SPIDER YEAR LIST! There, I've said it. I'm year-listing spiders again apparently. Anyway yesterday was awesome. From Iping and Burton I recorded 65 species of spider which from mid winter on a frosty day I think is pretty smart. I got TWO lifers out of it. Neither were from Iping. Iping was great for some big impressive spiders I would normally expect to see in autumn, such as an adult Ero tuberculata above (looks like another new record for January). This adult female Agroeca proxima. 

Other charismatic mega fauna included Marpissa muscosa.

Nuctenea umbratica. I don't think I have ever noticed their weird eye arrangement before.

Clubiona corticalis with the above two on the same tree.

And a Cream-streaked Ladybird just to keep my eye in with the beetles.

I had collected tons of linys which it turned out were going to be mostly unexciting species. The Sphagnum areas at Iping were yielding nothing so by about 1.30 pm I found myself sucked into the Black Hole at Burton Pond.

A year on I was very much aware how much my spider field craft, especially with money spiders, had moved on. I was ticking off things such a Sintula corniger, Taranuncus setosus, even female Notioscopus sarcinatus (I did check these). In addition immature Theridiosoma gemmosum and Rugathodes instabilis. Black Hole really is a gem and recent work that Jane Willmott has done there is clearly having a great benefit to the site by keeping it more open. An an adult Platnickina tincta was a bit of a surprise too.

Oh and Demetrias monostigma. If you are finding this beetle, you are on a good site for spiders. And beetles. I only ever see it in old Greater Tussock-sedge and Marram tussocks.

It wasn't until I got home though that I realised I had found something rather good.

Here is Centromerus brevivulvatus. Last seen in the UK in West Sussex in 1998 by Dick Jones at Durford Heath. It's Endangered and Nationally Rare. Only ever known from seven 10 km squares, four of which are in Sussex. Interestingly one of these is Iping Common where it was last seen in 1969. This record though is an entirely new 10 km square making eight 10 km squares, five of which are in Sussex! Oddly only this week I assessed this species as a 'Sussex rare species' and thought to myself "I should get out there and have a look at Durford Heath."

Have a look at the SRS page for it here. Here is the map. Look at all those 'x's.

The singularity that is the Black Hole opened up an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to 1998. What was I doing then? This:

I didn't know anything about spiders then, but I did look a lot more like a spider than I do now. I'd have been half way through my astrophysics degree at Sussex Uni at this point (that's not the name of a hipster ale by the way {hipsters didn't exist then} - in the above image I am halfway through a pint of Hoegaarden).

Anyway, back to Black Hole. One of the next spiders I looked at I only recently ticked off up north. I was amazed to find a male Aphileta misera. This seems to be a species new to West Sussex, the last Sussex record from Ashdown Forest was in 1970. So where was I in 1970? Well I was an unconstituted smear of matter across the Staffordshire landscape, with smaller clusters peppered around the world depending on where my mother's food would come from some seven years later. Some of my carbon might even have been sequestered by spiders at that point, probably the bits that would one day make up my neurons. We have all been there!

And also new for me was Diplocephalus permixtus. A species I was expecting to see up north. Turns out this is the first West Sussex record since 1944 and Sussex record since 1999.

Now I did quite a bit of recording at both these sites last year and it really does go to show how important repeat visits are. With just shy of 10% of the UK fauna seen in a single day I will not be doing any recording now until next weekend.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to spend some time in the field with other arachnologists. The shadow in the above photo is Richard Gallon, with Ray Gabriel central and me on the right. We were looking for the enigmatic and extremely rare Thanatus formicinus. A big and impressive spider last seen in Sussex in 1969. There is about as much chance of finding Winnie the Pooh, also from the Ashdown Forest. Yet it did just turn unexpectedly up at Clumber in Nottinghamshire, where I assume it has remained undetected for decades.

We didn't find it. Possibly due to a thick layer of Scotch Mist.

However, we did have an awesome day and recorded something in the region of 45 species of spider. Armed with a trio of suction samplers, we looked like a cross between the Ghostbusters and Last of the Summer Wine. Richard had his petrol driven beast and Ray and I had an electric one a piece. First sample and Richard got a lifer for him and a new one for the year for me. A big female Agroeca brunnea. Only the second time I have seen it and the first female.

I didn't take many more photos on the day, except this Himacerus boops recorded at Duddleswell. It seems to be a genuinely scarce species in Sussex. I do a lot of sampling on heathland and this is the first Sussex record since 2011!

Now back to the spiders. I was able to tease out just what I wrote down from my sampler in the field and make a comparison between a single petrol suction sampler and an electric one. 

This has proved a really interesting exercise. It was fairly standardised, we did about as many samples as each other. Mine certainly took longer to collect and a shorter time to process but I think this is a fairly standardised comparison without getting really science about it. Clearly the petrol gets more but they do get slightly different things when using them together. In this case, it would seem the electric sampler slightly inflates the metric of 'proportion of species with conservation status' that is a valuable tool for assessing a site's quality through its invertebrate assemblage.

EDIT: Totally forgot to say that Sintula corniger is new to East Sussex!

It was such a great day, so good to spend time with other arachnologists, something I rarely do being almost entirely self-taught. A big thanks to Richard and Ray and thank to Richard for the cake and coffee. I have been driving by Duddleswell Tea Rooms for 12 years! I was a bit gutted I didn't take more photos, so on Tuesday I went back up to the forest and did two hours sucking with one electric battery at Old Lodge and got a few goodies. First up I took some photos of species from above.

Here is the tiny Centromerus dilutus which is super common. This is on full zoom. This spider has a maximum length of 1.5 mm when adult! I never take the time to take photos of linys, this was quite a fun exercise but the photos are all poor, the light was awful too.

An adult male Walckneaeria antica.

And also very common, Centromeritus conccinus.

Evarcha arcuata and Cercidia prominens, both adult males at Old Lodge in November. There do not appear to be any records for either in November. It just goes to show it's worth getting out there even on these cold November days.

I did get a few species we didn't find on Saturday. These were.

Ozyptila atomaria

Micrommata virescens

Crustulina guttata

Meioneta mollis (new to site and Nationally Rare)

Tapinopa longidens (first Sussex record since 1968!)

Hahnia helveola (new site record and a lifer)

The last two of these species being new for the year putting me on 336. only 19 behind Matt! Here is a young Micrommata virescens.

Not to be mistaken for a young Tibellus. 

To the naked eye, these and young Thanatus striatus all look quite similar but Micrommata have what I can only describe as 'feet'. Like in this shot. Showing that they are related to huntsman.

And finally the adult male Hahnia helveola, which happens to be the 48th new spider I have had this year and my 7500th species in all. Now I wrote this pretty quickly in just over an hour as I am now going to go to, you've guessed it, Ashdown Forest. It saves me driving to the north of England to look for linys, while still getting good records for Sussex.

After hearing of the success of Thanatus formicinus being found in numbers two weeks ago in Nottinghamshire, I thought I would try and have another go for it at Old Lodge. I didn't find any. However, I did get three new spiders for me and six new spiders for Old Lodge. First up though, I found quite a few immature Micrommata virescens. This is the spider that grows up into a huge luminous green huntsman (an old image is shown below). This time of year they are pretty small and look quite like Tibellus. Of the two I photographed, I wonder if they are a young male (above) and female (below) as they are quite different looking even at this small size.

And here is what they'll become next year. Ashdown Forest is the main stronghold in Sussex for this amazing spider, nice to be able to record it in November. Actually, I recorded around 20 species today using the suction sampler. 

This one was new to Old Lodge. Agroeca proxima. Agroecas look at first glance like wolf spiders but they are a different family. I do'r record them very often, in fact, this is only the 7th Agroeca record I have, this probably due to their late season.

The three money spiders that were new for me were also new to the site. Two of these, Ceratinella brevipes and Tenuiphantes cristatus are widespread species with a strong north-western distribution. Typical for Old Lodge to be home to species like this that are uncommon elsewhere in the county. There really is no reason to go up north when you go to the Ashdown Forest, it's like a bit of north-west England down here in the south. The third was also new to the reserve network, it's the nationally scarce species Notioscopus sarcinatus or the Swamp Lookout Spider. It's less than 2mm long and has a really odd feature in the male. A finger like projection that sticks up in the middle of the cephalothorax just behind the eyes. I couldn't get a decent photo down the microscope but here you go. The 387th spider recorded on our reserves.

Also new to Old Lodge were Ero furcata and Walckenaeria cuspidata.  There were also dozens of the nationally scarce Hypselistes jacksoni which I recorded there last March. It was possibly the commonest money spider in the bog. It has a really interesting shaped head too.

So, didn't find the target species but it was well worth it. Can't remember the last time I added three new spiders in one day and Notioscopus is a really good find.

A couple of weeks ago at the annual Sussex Biological Recorder's Seminar I was approached by Brad Scott (above) during lunch who said "thanks ever so much for that course on Grasses, Sedges and Rushes that you ran several years ago, it really kick-started my interest in natural history." Now if I tell you that since this course, Brad has been on my Common Woodland Bryophytes course and has almost seen more mosses and liverworts than me now (have a look at the PSL rankings for bryophytes) it starts to put things in perspective. Yet this is just the start of Brad's natural history adventures!

It's exactly this kind of inspiration that I always hope my courses will provide. It's certainly not going to be everyone that gets the bug like this but even if we reach one or two people a year in this way we are making a difference. So, I asked Brad if he would mind writing a few words about his experience with the Trust's courses and this is what he put together...

So why not book on one of the many fantastic courses Sussex Wildlife Trust has to offer? I can't promise that you'll become a Ghostbuster but you will certainly learn something about the amazing wildlife of Sussex and have a great time in the process. Call 01273 497561 for more info (I resisted saying it!).

I went a walk around Old Lodge on Sunday to see if I could spot a Micrommata virescens after I had had a text from Susy Jones saying she had spotted a huge green spider in Ashdown Forest. I failed to see one but I did pick up a couple of smart looking female orb weavers that I knew to be in the genus Hypsosinga. Knowing there were two species I thought I should check a couple and surprisingly I had actually picked up both species. I think their abdomens look just like boiled sweets.  In the above photo the top species is the commoner of the two being Hypsosinga pygmaea, the bottom the nationally scarce (Nb) Hypsosinga sanguinea. Both new species for me leaving me on 4020. In the same net, I also swept Heather Ladybird which was also a new species for me.

Here are the epigynes of the two species, easy to separate in these two. Here is H. pygmaea.

And H. sanguinea.