Yep! That's an Aulonia albimana spiderling, a Critically Endangered/Nationally Rare and rather odd little wolf spider that no one has ever digitally photographed in the UK, as it was last seen here 40 years ago in 1985! Madonna's "Like a Virgin" was in the charts the last time this was seen here. So how on Earth did we managed to find it? Well, like all such adventures it started with a hunch. Mark Telfer has a 'Species Recovery Project' contract this year, lead by the National Trust and funded by Natural England. Part of the brief was to try and find Aulonia albimana. It has only ever been found at three disparate sites in England (check out the SRS page here) but the Isle of Wight site is on MOD land and furthermore, has scrubbed over. Making it simultaneously not worth visiting and nearly impossible to get to. This spider seems to like short, bare areas with broken turf. Which may be dry or recently wet - it's not all that clear.
When I was over at the end of August to see the mantises, I offered to come out for the day with all batteries fully charged but spending over half of September in rockpools chasing nudibranchs, it ended up drifting into October. Yet my theory was that in early autumn, there are always loads of wolf spiders in the suction sampler. They are typically sub-adult Pardosa that are mostly impossible to identify but hugely outnumber the adults they become the following spring (after a winter of being whittled down in nature's great reality TV show elimination process). Yet Aulonia is very different to all other wolf spiders here. It's in a genus of its own. It's tiny (3-4 mm as an adult) and it's odd looking: It's gracile with orange legs (except the front femora are contrastingly black) and most famously of all, it has white 'knuckles' to the palps. All of these features are clearly evident in immatures (which Roberts also states), so we didn't need to find an adult to prove this species is still present. This was an epic long shot - we were about 2 km from where it was last seen but I was buoyed up by a successful British Arachnological Society trip to Wicken Fen at the weekend and on a roll. And I do love an epic long shot. I almost forgot, Mark had another target; the saltmarsh wolfie Arctosa fulvolineata.
Any day in the field that requires two boat rides (although my first was a ferry) has to produce something memorable. Especially as it was dead calm, mild, with not a drop of dew and with more sun than forecast. As perfect as you could get for a field day in October. We were kindly shuttled out by the NT Harbour Master to this tiny area called Brickfields in Newtown Harbour. You can't get there directly due to the MOD firing range. Here's Mark and Jo Hodgkins (Mark's wife and NT advisor) as we head out to Brickfields. After a 15 minute boat ride, were unloaded at a narrow wooden jetty.
It was about 10.00 am. We had to be back at the jetty promptly at 2.00 pm. The clock was ticking.
T-MINUS 240 MINUTES
The narrow shore line was littered with old bricks. "This looks perfect for Arctosa fulvolineata" I said. I got turning, I had turned about 10 bricks when Mark turned his first one and found it! New to the island and a rare beast in its own right (Nationally Rare, Near Threatened & Section 41). It's going to be one of those days then (I turned another 60 bricks and nothing)! Amazing how these things cope with twice daily inundation during these big tides at least. The intergrade between habitats is remarkable here; saltmarsh, scrub, ancient woodland, grassland, soft rock cliffs and damp Wood Small-reed clumps all occur on a postage stamp size area of land. We got the vacs out along the southern upper saltmarsh edge. Hundreds of Silometopus ambiguus peppered the sampling trays. Nationally Scarce but pretty common on saltmarshes. I vac'd an immature Liocranoeca striata (also Nationally Scarce), and last seen on the island 40 years ago. Here's the Arctosa.
And one of Mark's shots of it. Look at that beast!
Heading inland, we walked into this strange looking meadow. It had clearly been grazed quite well at some point this year. I first thought it was tightly grazed chalk-grassland but a closer look revealed, as well as species like Knapweed, Burnet-saxifrage and Yellow-wort, there were lots of old meadow species too. Chiefly Saw-wort, Pepper-saxifrage and a bit of Dyer's Greenweed. Here's some of Jo's photos (as usual, I forget to take any landscape shots or shots of us surveying).
We vac'd a little but were mostly finding lots of Pardosa (mainly young Pardosa nigriceps), Alopecosa pulverulenta and a few Pisaura mirabilis. Hahnia nava was abundant too but there was little else here. Round the corner, a scrubbier ungrazed version of the same grassland type tempted us.
We found a few nice things here but it didn't feel right to me for Aulonia. We had Myrmarachne formicaria (Nationally Scarce but well represented on the Isle of Wight), Clubiona diversa, and some typically more wetland species. Mark vac'd two Crustulina sticta here (Nationally Scarce) that were new to the Isle of Wight. We only had about an hour left. We headed to some north facing, partly vegetated soft tock cliffs.
T-MINUS 60 MINUTES
The sun was out by now but we didn't find a lot. What was there was interesting though. I spotted a young Wood Cricket and a Lesne's Earwig. Mark vac'd an interesting Leiodes but the spiders beyond the large young Pardosa and immature Myrmarachne there were thin on the ground. We had about 20 minutes left so I thought I would vac the meadow hard.
T-MINUS 20 MINUTES
I was finding just the same species as before but I hadn't given up. By this point we were at the southern end of the meadow, within shouting distance of the jetty. Time was running out!
T-MINUS 9 MINUTES
Mark and Jo headed back to the jetty to get ready, I was determined to keep going up to the bitter end. There in the vac was a thin, black bodied and yellow-egged spider moving like a wolfie but not much bigger than Hahnia nava. Could it be? I had fought really hard all day to keep my search image focused not on wolf spiders like Pardosa but for something small like a Hahnia or Micaria - it payed off. I got it in a tube had a closer look. There were those pale palpal 'knuckles'. "MAAAAAAARRRRRK!!!" I yelled. Here is the first ever digital photo of Aulonia albimana taken in the UK!
T-MINUS 5 MINUTES
With one shoe on and one shoe off, Mark "Diddle Diddle Dumpling" Telfer came hurtling into the meadow. I was shaking with excitement at this point and barely coherent. Uncontrollable laughter erupted from all persons. But we had five minutes left. No time to waste chuckling like fools! I had one more chance to vac this end of the meadow. I only went and found another one!
T-MINUS 1 MINUTE
I could hear the outboard approaching but there was another immature in the tray, time for a few quick snaps! That has to be the best spider find of my life. Utterly stoked.
My hasty attempt at a habitat shot as we dived over the style into the boat.
WOW, that was an intense end to an awesome day in the field. So here's where we were in relation to the last place it was seen 40 years ago, some 1.86 km away. It could well be in all such suitable habitat in this area.
Here are some better shots of mine.
And a great shot Mark took down the microscope. That pale area on the palp clearly visible here. I suggest we give this spider the common name White-knuckled Wolf Spider for more reasons than one!
My 559th spider in the British Isles and probably the best one of them all. White-knuckle, high-octane arachnological gold dust on a biblical scale. Now I did go on to do two low tides before I left the island the following morning, but in the interests of staying on message, I will talk about the awesome new nudibranch I found some other time. It made the whole 24 hours just magical.
What I love about this record is that it only happened through collaboration and lots of things coming together. Mark's hunch, his contract and the fact he moved to the island, Jo's work with the NT and my stubbornness and relentless energy all came together to make this happen. Add in that ticking clock to make that one of the most memorable four hours of my natural history life! Thanks for letting me tag along Mark! If you ever a hunch, no matter what the odds are, just go for it - 99% of this game is just turning up.
Well, this is exciting! We have always liked the idea of having a tick-list based on the UK Species Inventory (UKSI) on the Pan-species Listing (PSL) website but it was beyond our expertise, funding and available time. Those capable guys at BUBO however, have decided that some 17 years after the launch of the excellent (and free) bird listing website BUBO, that now is the time to add the UKSI to it. Effectively, meaning that you can use the sophisticated listing package to collate and maintain your PSL list.
A phased approach
First off, we are doing this several groups at a time over the next few moths. Starting with butterflies, dragonflies & damselflies and orthopteroids (crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, phasmids, earwigs etc.). The idea on this is to trouble shoot as we go, not overwhelm ourselves and the users in the process and allow the 'targets' feature to develop a little, away from the existing c5600 or so users who are all at this stage just able to list birds. The 'target's feature is great, it's a quantifiable way of showing you what your 'bogeys' are based upon the species that most other listers have seen that you have not. Bird lists will therefore NOT automatically populate your PSL list at this stage, but something like this is coming down the line.
What about the PSL rankings and website?
The PSL website will very much remain the home of the PSL rankings and more. Listers are encouraged to use BUBO simply to collate and maintain their lists, then add the totals in the relevant taxa category on the PSL website. There are some more features coming to the website in the next few months, to show a stronger link between biological recording and PSL - an exciting time for the movement. If you use BUBO and/or the PSL website, please do remember to submit your records by some other means, such as iRecord or direct to your local records centre or a recording scheme. In an ideal world, one website would link to the other and populate the totals in the appropriate places but we just don't have that luxury I am afraid. This is however, a huge improvement on collating your totals in spreadsheets, scribbling them down in notebooks or counting your sea-gooseberries on your fingers.
There are a number of possible scenarios:
1) Already on BUBO but not PSL?
If you are already listing birds on BUBO and think some or all of the other taxonomic groups are of interest for you, then please do join the PSL website here. You'll have to populate the PSL website with your species totals. Don't be put off by some of the huge lists there, you could always end up being a top lister for say butterflies in the short term. And by focusing on the lesser known areas of natural history, you could end up in the UK5000 club before you know it! The best thing to do if you are already on BUBO is to read
this first and then please do also sign up to the PSL website
here. Please do use your real name and put a line or two in your profile, as we get a lot of bots and fake accounts.
2) Already on PSL but not BUBO?
My priority here, managing a smooth transition for any existing PSLers who want to move to BUBO for managing their lists. First off, sign up to BUBO
here. Select 'Create New List', then from the location name, select 'Britain, Ireland, Isle of Man & Channel Islands (PSL)'. The quick way to do this is to type PSL into the location drop down. The rest of this set up is all very intuitive. Then you can start ticking off your butterflies, dragonflies and crickets or whatever groups we have launched this week.
3) Already on both?
Well, I reckon you've probably got it figured out already, and with the above, it should all be very simple. Start at scenario 1 above if unsure.
4) New to PSL and BUBO?
Start by setting up a PSL account
here, (do please use your own name and write a few lines to show you are a naturalist and not a fake account), read up on the movement first and get to grips with the idea. Then I would sign up to BUBO
here and skip back to scenario 1 above. This is a great way to get into PSL from scratch, as you will be in a unique position, able to add a few groups and orders at a time with a community of other people doing the same and offering support.
This (being the next few months) really is a once in a lifetime opportunity to break into PSL in a unique way. Be careful, it's addictive and it might just change your life!
Finally, do please consider donating to BUBO as although it's free, it does cost the guys to run it. As a top ten lister and founder of the movement, I really felt like I should set up something regular on a monthly standing order to help out. If others are able to do this too, no matter how small, it will make sure that PSL and BUBO can work together in perpetuity.
Coming soon...maybe mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish...or do you have any suggestions of what you'd like to see next? Everything is coming in time, we just didn't want to do it all at once or start with say, 4100 beetles!
I don't often post about earwigs. Mainly because there are so few species. I have just had a lifer from some samples I took in west Kent in September though. I have finally seen a Hop-garden Earwig! It's not been recorded in Sussex. It seems the best part of the world to see it is in Kent, Suffolk and Essex, so it's likely to turn up in north East Sussex if it ever will. The females look quite like Lesne's Earwig females but the males have quite different pincers to one another. Both species lack the visible hind-wings peeping out from under the fore-wings that is so obvious on a Common Earwig (which I don't have a photo of). You could easily mistake either of them for an immature Common Earwig if you don't know what you're looking for. They look neater and a bit more translucent and less substantial than Common.
Here is the male Hop-garden.
And the male Lesne's Earwig.
I have 149 records in my database of earwigs. One for Hop-house and 13 for Lesne's, showing that Common hugely dominates in the field. But I have seen a fourth species that has not made it into my database at it's in the log book at work for the Woods Mill moth trap. The tiny rove-beetle-like Lesser Earwig turned up a few years ago. This really is a midget, half the size of the other species. This one does have very obvious hind-wings protruding through.
How many of you got the popular culture reference in the title? I wonder if anyone did because I always thought it was Power not Peril but then so did half the Internet...
Last year it was tussocking. Last week it was sieving flood debris. This week I have mostly been grabbing handfuls of the moss
Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus and shaking them into a white tray in an old quarry at Ditchling Beacon. It's basically the chalk-grassland equivalent of tussocking and it's really productive. You have to have a keen eye though as there are some pretty small things to look out for. The above snail is the tiny
Prickly Snail Acanthinula aculeata. It's one of those snails that I've wanted to see ever since I bought the snail atlas back in 2009 and I remember reading that the spines often rub off by the time you are likely to find them, not this one though. At a maximum size of 2.2 mm, it's twice the size of this species....
This is the aptly named
Dwarf Snail Punctum pygmaeum. I'm still amazed I managed to spot it at 1.2 mm! I've included my lucky piece of laminated graph paper for scale. You can tell it's not an immature snail of a larger species because the number of whorls (>3.5) show it's an adult. I could just discern these whorls with the naked eye which made me have a closer look.
I added nine species to my list including a couple of great looking harvestmen,
Anelasmocephalus cambridgei and
Mitostoma chrysomelas (as well as lots of the odd looking
Homalenotus quadridentatus I found there two years ago)
. I found a smart looking staph called
Quedius picipes and this earwig which I thought looked different to the common one. Indeed, it is
Lesne's Earwig Forficula lesnei. Finally, I've seen one other than the common one! It was the fact that the hind wings were not sticking out that led me to think it was different (although I didn't know this until I keyed it out).
I also saw the nationally scarce ground bug
Drymus pumilio which is about half the size of the much commoner
Drymus sylvaticus with which it was found. This is quite a scarce bug and is only the second time I have seen it.
Not scarce, but it's always nice to put a name to a face. This large caterpillar was bright and patterned enough for me to have a go at identifying it and I'm quite confident it's the larvae of the
Brown Rustic moth.
Here is the kind of clump of moss that was coming up with so many species. It has the English name
Big Shaggy-moss Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus.
So I added nine new species putting me on 4753. That's 35 new species so far this year. Slightly under my required target to get 10,000 by the time I'm 40 but it is January and the day is but young!
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