The Lyons Share

This post is like so meta. Cubed. I went to an undisclosed site in East Sussex a few weeks ago and was shown a small natural cave in a sandrock outcrop. I was in there like a shot! There was the ubiquitous Metellina merianae (or as I call it the Cave-entrance Spider) which I see in any tunnel or cave. There were also dozens of Meta menardi, the true cave spider. This is only the second time I have seen this large and impressive spider in Sussex. Well, that's probably because you don't spend enough time in caves I here you say. Wrong I say. I suddenly thought about it and I have looked at loads of caves and tunnels in Sussex with bat specialists such as Tony Hutson and moth-ers like Steve Teale. In fact, I've looked at plenty of (what I assume are) suitable sites and I just don't see this spider.

So why is it so restricted? I have no idea, so I will pull out the records and have a look at the metadata. First off this record is in a natural cave. It was very wet with flowing water, there were perhaps 40 in there that I could see. Lots of mosquitoes and a Herald moth. Mammal droppings too, so plenty to eat. Secondly is the previous record in Sussex which was found in the workshop at Woods Mill by Michael Blencowe, I confirmed it as Meta menardi. It was the first record for West Sussex. The far end of the workshop is a bit musty but mostly quite dry. It's pitch black until you open the door or turn the lights on. No real opening and very little food. We only ever saw one there and I've not noticed it since.

Prior to that there are three  East Sussex records (all bar one are of single female records). Two from the soft-rock sandy cliffs  to the east of Hastings in 2006 (this record is of three females) and 2003 have no metadata so I can't comment on these, so lets assume they are natural caves. The only other record was made, would you believe it, from Beachy Head! This record states that it was "found in a fissure on cliff top". 

So most of the records are from relatively small natural caves with permanent openings. This also tallies with where I have seen them up north. The Woods Mill record is the anomaly. So, maybe it's worth looking at smaller more natural caves than the bat tunnels I have spent more time in (where you are more likely to see a Bloxworth Snout moth than a cave spider!). There is also the scarce Meta bourneti to look out for, that hasn't been recorded in Sussex yet.

I have updated this post having realised that what I found at Burton Pond was quite unusual. Here is the original post:

'Just a quick one tonight. I was looking through some specimens from the survey at Burton Pond and came across this strange long white crustacean. I was stumped at first but then dug out the FBA crustacean key and got it to Niphargus aquilex. I had never even heard of this genus and I'm not surprised either, being that they are mostly underground/cave-dwelling species! I found this one at New Piece by sieving sphagnum! Has anyone else encountered this species/genus?'

Twitter went crazy after I posted this and someone sent me this link to this paper stating these creatures have remained unchanged for 19 million years and are the oldest (in the evolutionary sense) living things in the UK. There are some great facts from Mr Anonymous in the comments section that show that although not scarce, this is an animal that you rarely stumble across, you have to go looking for them. I love chance encounters like these.

It's that time of year when suddenly so much natural history is happening that I don't have time to blog about it. Last Thursday I was lucky enough to go into assorted dark dank places in West Sussex including railway tunnels, ice house and cellars. It was a pan-species lister's dream with Tony Hutson on bats and fungus gnats (Tony literally wrote the book on fungus gnats) and Tom Ottley on bryophytes, I had high hopes from the outset. My first record of the day was a singing Firecrest and I went on to record six singing birds throughout the day, amazing how common they are in this part of the world. I only heard one Goldcrest all day! Anyway, bryophytes. You may be forgiven if you thought the above photo was just a bad paint job, it was in fact the tiny moss Eucladium verticillatum. When this moss first starts growing (called protonema) it does look like a wash of green paint so Tony, I am sure Tom will forgive you for dismissing his taxanomic group in one sentence!

Invertebrates were few and far between for me, I only saw one Tissue all day and a few Heralds. This was the fate of one Herlad moth and no, it's not having a bubble bath!

In all of the places we went, the spider Metellina merianae was present but I am yet to see the larger Meta in Sussex, it must be rare down here as these sites are perfect for them. In one place I saw about ten Nesticus cellulanus too which was great. Other than that, the only spiders we saw was a single Pholcus and a female Labulla thoracica. In one wet tunnel, there were pools of water with Water-crickets Velia caprai happily spinning about in the dark! I think my invertebrate of the day though was a stonking Hypera nigrirostris that I caught in flight with my hand walking to one of the sites. That is one good looking beetle! I always remember Mark Telfer telling me you should always try and catch beetles in flight as they are often interesting and it certainly does pay off. In the last two days I have seen two new beetles doing this and I didn't even have my net!

Tony identified this strange larvae as Speolepta leptogaster and it's apparently the closest thing we have to a true cave specialist fungus gnat!

It was a great day out, I love getting into extreme environments, you don't see huge amounts but what is there is usually very interesting and highly specialised. Alas, this was almost certainly a one off opportunity for me, as access into these areas is greatly limited due to the importance of these sites as bat roosts. A huge thank you to Tony and Tom and also to Sue Harris for organising the day!

I helped Sussex Bat Group to count the hibernating bats in the abandoned tunnels and mines in West Sussex yesterday, my main motivation being to get access to our Marehill Quarry site as I haven't been in there for several years. Bat numbers were low due to wet and mild conditions but we did see Natterer's and Daubenton's Bats and I'm feeling much more confident at identifying those two now. There were no rare bats this time.

As ever though, it was the invertebrates that got me excited! In the West Dean tunnel (above), we recorded the usual Herald moths, mostly around the cave entrance along with a couple of Peacock butterflies. The only other moth we saw deep in the cave was a single Tissue (quite a scarce moth in Sussex). Spiders were poor here restricted to Metellina merianae, we didn't see any of the larger Meta species. Further into the tunnel we saw a single Eristalis tenax, a rove beetle that turned out to be new to me, Quedius mesomelinus. At about 200 m in which is approximately the half way mark and about as far as you can get from the light, we recorded Cellar Snail Oxychilus cellarius (new to me!) and Rosy Woodlouse. The only other species we saw was Oniscus asellus.

At Marehill Quarry, you are never that far from the light so there tend to be more invertebrates (last time I was there I recorded a Bloxworth Snout). By far the most frequent species being a heleomyzid fly, that at first I thought was Scoliocentra villosa but now I'm not so sure. Heralds were again present in numbers also accompanied by a single Tissue. A cluster of Eristalis tenax was present at the entrance as was a single Armadallidium vulgare. The spiders though were much more interesting. There were lots more Metellina merianae as well as a male Micrargus rufus (new to me), a stonking male Amaurobius ferox with white palps and best of all a Comb-footed Cellar Spider Nesticus cellulanus (photo above) which I have never seen before. This is quite a local species and it doesn't look like there are that many records of it in Sussex. So I got four new species and end the day on 4765. I'm already 47 up in 2014 including 20 beetles!

I went to see my good friend and tattooist Gerry Carnelly in Derby and we went out to Thor's Cave in the Manifold Valley, Staffordshire. This is one of the most striking places I have ever been too and I am always captivated by the sheer scale of this cave entrance. I took the high powered torch in the hope of finding some moths and spiders. However, progress was impeded by me stopping to look at every moss on the limestone walls. They were indeed a varied bunch with a lot of overlap with mosses that I see on the Downs. The striking moss I found at Woods Mill (Anomodon viticulosus) was plentiful as were Ctenidium mollusconum and the liverwort Plagiochila porelloides. I spotted this rather broad-leaved acrocarp with a glaucous tint to it and managed to get it to species. It's Encalypta streptocarpa and has the rather stupid English name of Spiral Extinguisher-moss that is about as useless at helping me with the ID as the Latin name is!
The Manifold Valley is over-shadowed by the more popular Dovedale but nothing at Dovedale compares to Thor's Cave AND I reckon there are SEVERAL order's of magnitude more people at Dovedale. I have found you have to queue there to cross the stepping stones. Not my idea of fun. I was a bit gutted that I only heard a Dipper very briefly but I did get to grips with this moss that was growing all along the Manifold. It's Cinclidotus fontinaloides and is perhaps my last new species of the year. I doubt I will get any further than 3735 now.

Anyway, enough mosses. The cave is where all the fun is. After a steep climb you finally come to the vast house-sized entrance of the cave. You have to clamber up a rather slippy limestone entrance to find a huge entrance chamber. If you know where to go and you have a decent torch you can go quite far in and that's where all the fun stuff is. I spotted the rather awesome cave spider Meta menardi deep in the cave. This is a big creepy spider and if we had found this on the podcast (like I had hoped) Blencowe would have been quaking in his boots.
We also found five Tissues (fortunately they were unused) hibernating in the back of the cave but no Heralds.
Although this part of Staffordshire is a world away from where I grew up, it's a magical place that I do not think of as Staffordshire as I walk around it. It is a beautiful county really if you can get over the cold, the lack of species and the lack of coastline. Watch out Sussex I'm coming home!

We recorded the rest of Episode 3 of our podcast 'The Natural History of Sussex'  with special guest Tony Hutson today. We went to a series of undisclosed locations and I saw at least four species new to me. Best of all was my first ever Brown Long-eared Bat! Not the rarest of bats but certainly one I have managed to miss for many years. Other highlights included this strange cave dwelling fly called Scoliocentra villosa.

Outside we saw these smart fungi growing on the root plates of fallen trees. I am pretty sure these are called Brick Tufts. A great day out and I can't wait to hear Mat's magical editing once more!