The North of England has been blessed with a new invader

She’s beautiful.

Argiope bruennichi

The colloquial name is the wasp spider, and they’re not normally spotted in Cheshire, but one was found in a recent survey. There is some concern when a non-native species shows up — is this a sign of climate change? Also, English northerners are not accustomed to these big honkers.

“You know your big, chunky house spiders – the ones you think are massive and frighten the life out of you in your living room? A female wasp spider is probably a bit bigger than those,” said Scott Wilson, head of field programmes at the zoo.

I’d be thrilled and surprised if I saw a wasp spider — they’re native to Europe and North Africa, and I haven’t seen any here. We instead have two equivalent native species, Argiope aurantia and Argiope trifasciata (we have a lovely A. aurantia living in our backyard right now). Maybe they are a sign of a warming trend in the UK, but they are quite nice animals, inoffensive and helpful in clearing out your grasshoppers and crickets. They just look a little intimidating. Don’t be frightened.

A Cambrian chelicerate!

I’ll have to show my spiders this reconstruction of their great-great-many-times-great grandmama. She’s adorable.

Megachelicerax cousteaui

It’s all in the chelicerae.

In a study published in Nature, Research Scientist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril and Associate Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, describe Megachelicerax cousteaui, a 500-million-year-old sea predator discovered in Utah’s West Desert. It is the oldest known chelicerate, the arthropod group that includes spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. The discovery pushes the evolutionary history of chelicerates back by 20 million years.

Hey, I’ve visited the West Desert of Utah — but all I found were fossilized trilobites. Lots of trilobites. Megachelicerax food. But I never found a predator like this one.

The key feature identifying it as a chelicerate are those big clawed appendages on the front of its face, which is also a prominent feature of modern spiders, much modified. The appendage is now a crushing/chewing anvil, and the thumb of the claw has evolved into a wicked needle.

Its most extraordinary feature, however, is its unmistakable chelicera — the pincer-like feeding appendages that define the subphylum Chelicerata and distinguish spiders from insects. While insects possess sensory antenna as their foremost appendages, chelicerates have grasping, often venomous tools. Despite a rich Cambrian fossil record, no unambiguous chelicera-bearing arthropod from that time had ever been found – until now.

The thing about modern spiders is that they’re mostly defenseless — no sting, no pointy legs, no claws — except for that one extraordinarily useful weapon, the chelicerae. Well, they also have silk, making them a kind of retiarius of the arthropod world. You’re probably not afraid of their webs, but you worry about their big chompers and the venom they carry.

I don’t think the retiarii would have poisoned their tridents, though.

Grisly & horrible

Sometimes my spiders make me queasy. This is the reality of nature, though.

I fed my Parasteatoda a mealworm this morning, and sadly, the spider was not particularly effective in killing its prey. It’s been gnawing on the worm for over 4 hours, while it writhes and twitches. It was frantically writhing away most of the day as the spider clung to it, nibbling.

Spiders are predators, you know.

The image quality is bad because I recorded it through the plexiglas of its container. At least it blunts the horror.

Definitely not for kids.

We are kidnappers!

Mary and I thought our yard Argiope was looking lonely, so we visited a local breeding ground and snatched up a couple more. This is a new female, already adapting to life in our yard.

We also grabbed a couple of smaller Argiope, which might be males, or are simply too young to have the markings. They’re lurking somewhere in the underbrush.

Did you know…

That you can use your home computer as a spider incubator?

I keep several containers of Parasteatoda on top of my Mac Mini, where they thrive in the warmth and provide endless hours of entertainment while I’m working. All four of these contain egg sacs, and three of the four have hatched out this morning!