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.
The Roaches will always be one of the places that absolutely blow me away. Only 35 miles from where I grew up (as far as Iping Common is from home) but it felt like another country growing up. So this morning I headed to this site to do some upland spidering and had a pretty awesome day. I got a lifer in the first sample. The embarrassingly common Poecilonta variegata. It's great coming up 'north'!
Then on the second suction sample I got another lifer. It wasn't until I got home that |I realised which Bolyphantes I had but all the specimens I took were Bolyphantes luteolus and not the more northern species. And at about 400 m I saw on my phone that Matt had pulled ahead meaning we were now level-pegging on 373. The tension!
I suction-sampled a lovely adult male
Walckneaeria acuminata. Look at that eye turret!
It got a little colder and I slowed down but the surprise of a male
Snow Flea in the suction sampler was awesome!
It's such an alien landscape. Love it up there. My first
Red Grouse in over 15 years was a welcome distraction.
Plants I grew up with like
Crowberry and
Cowberry seem exotic to me now.
At over 450 m,
Megabunus diadema was surprisingly hardy. A new 10 km square for this species.
Then I found what I was looking for, some stones to turn over. Here is an adult female
Segestria senoculata at nearly 450 m.
A
Hedgehog Slug.
I picked up two female Centromerus prudens, another lifer for me (374). What also turned out to be a lifer, the nationally scarce Porrhomma montanum below (375). And I have just spent an hour figuring out what the last spider was, another nationally scarce lifer!!! Scotinotylus evansi (376). Now, I'm off back up north to Gun Moor...
I first went up Oldacre Valley nearly 30 years ago with Steve Cooper to see Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries (anyone know if they are still there?). Always loved this valley on the western edge of Cannock Chase but all those years ago I didn't know anything about spiders. I did however remember that there were one or two tussocks of Greater Tussock-sedge up there. I wasn't disappointed and pulled out Notioscopus sarcinatus from the very first tussock I looked at! This nationally scarce/section 41 species hasn't been recorded in Staffs since 1994 according to the scheme and this might be a first record for the Chase even. I found at least four today.
I recorded 37 species of spider there today and 15 of these are new to the 10 km square SJ91 (the adjacent square to the one I grew up in). Of these, two were lifers and therefore new for the year for me putting me on 371 species and I'm slightly in the lead again. Will it last?
Here is the common (in the north west) Dicymbium tibiale with massive front legs in the male. There were lots of these present today.
Spider of the day will have to go to Erigonella ignobilis though. This nationally scarce species is new to me and looking at the recording scheme website was not only recorded from the exact same 10 km square (albeit 20 years ago) it was also recorded from the exact same 1 km square (beyond this there is only one other very old Staffs record). Pretty bonkers for something that is only 1.5 mm long.
If Alice Cooper were a money spider, he would be Lophomma punctatum. A common wetland species but also new to the 10 km square.
The only other nationally scarce species was Theridiosoma gemmosum, dwarfed by a springtail!
Tomorrow I will explore some Staffordshire Wildlife Trust reserves. Ten days to go...
I decided to do something completely different today so went to a site I haven't been to in over ten years; Kingley Vale. My target was Hyptiotes paradoxus. It must be easily identifiable as a spiderling but I couldn't find one. I got bored of looking on the Yew trees and went to the chalk-grassland and then things started to get interesting having only seen common species and Nigma puella up to that point.
I had a go with the suction sampler on this big south facing chalk slope and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw an adult male
Scotina. Now
on my birthday this year I picked up a female
Scotina palliardii from sieving moss at Levin Down. This being a
Nationally Rare and Endangered species. Knowing this is the most likely species in mid on chalk (and after a quick Google, December too) I got quite excited. Then I recorded another 15!!! More than ten were adults and this was all with six goes on the sampler and about four sessions of sieving moss. I can't quite believe it but in hindsight this was the commonest larger spider in the samples. It's also more
Scotina (off all three species) than I have seen before which is awesome as it is by far the rarest one.
It seems that the place where most of these spiders were present is on these little blow outs, that seem to be caused by livestock/rabbits. There is a overhand of moss (Hypnum lacunosum) and they seem to like that but I also sieved them from Pseudosceleropodium purum further down the slope.
So this is actually not a year tick for me but is possibly one of the finds of the year. It is in the same 10 km square as Levin Down so not a new dot on the map but clearly an extremely healthy population as I only ever found the one at Levin. I did get one new species for me, a lifer in the form of Drassyllus praeficus which has no records on the scheme but there is a record in 1984 from Heyshott Escarpment (nationally scarce also) and readily identifiable as a sub-adult. This puts me one behind Matt on 368 species and is my 250th larger spider of the year.
Also present was an adult female Cercida prominens.
Hypsosinga albovittata
Also present was a new 10 km square for Panamomops sulcifrons. Yet the photo that I was most pleased with was this young male Diaea dorsata.
I left the gang in Devon and headed to Cornwall for some spidering action with Tylan on his patch. We headed down to Kynance Cove on the Lizard, I have never been there before. I think the first hour that we spent on the cliffs at Kynance Cove was the highlight of the weekend. We were threatened by a horrendous on shore wind but storm cells that just kept missing us, the wind was battering the coast, you could feel the vibrations at the top of the cliffs! So despite hellish weather all around us, we remained dry. And best of all the spiders lined up to throw themselves at us. Five national rarities in an hour and four of them were lifers for me!
First up Gnaphosa occidentalis. I was really gutted I couldn't get down in the summer but this sub adult male was absolutely stunning. Really solid and tarantula-like with such a chocolatey abdomen. This is one handsome spider. Found under scattered stones on the grassy cliffs.
Then Tylan suggested looking at the cliffs themselves for Segestria bavarica. I found a lightning fast immature that disappeared in a crack. Then on the next rock I lifted up this amazing mature female. This all happened in the space of about ten minutes. This was a really big spider, there are no records for adult females on the recording scheme for December.
It took a little longer to find
Clubiona genevensis (but not much longer). A fairly small
Clubiona under stones, all these species were in a few metres of each other.
Then we got the suction sampler out in the same area and on the third go I got Tylan a rather special lifer. Agroeca cuprea! An adult male and the first record for Cornwall in 51 years! Soon after this we got a young female Euophrys herbigrada that we think is doable even at this stage. I must admit if Tylan had not found them on the site I would not be ticking this species but it certainly looked good to us both. It's much hairier, greyer and with thick white and black hairs that are more in stripes. It's darker with paler stripes rather than paler with a grid of darker markings as in frontalis. We recorded Hypsosinga sanguinea new to Cornwall and picked up another Dipoena inornata.
We carried on looking for linys but nothing exciting came out of the specimens. I found this odd plant in ericaceous tussocks which, with a little help from Mark Gurney, I realised I had stumbled on Hairy Greenweed! A lifer!
And another lifer but one I was expecting, Cornish Heath at long last! I also learnt that although Black Bog-rush forms an impressive tussock, it is very solid and does not accumulate too much plant litter. As such it is an inferior tussock compared to the likes or Purple Moor-grass and Greater Tussock-sedge.
I can't thank Tylan enough for this day, it was a really magic day in the field. Now there is one final write up. Tylan and family were kind enough to let me crash on Sunday night and on Monday we headed to the woods. The whole weekend is looking like a species list of over 80 species! As of today, I am only TWO species behind Matt on 367 species for the year. There are 21 days left in 2019 and it's getting very close...
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