Post by sam2000 on Jun 5, 2011 5:54:36 GMT -8
Hi all,
I found an attractive spider in my garden, see the photograph attached. I'm intrigued as to what species it is because I've not seen anything quite like it anywhere else in Britain before. I saw a spider in Bulgaria in the Stara Planina Mountains that I am confident is the same species. It's got a huge orb-shaped web but I've not actually seen it catch anything yet. By huge I mean about 50cm in diameter.
Last night I found another spider that happened to be sharing my bed. It's now in a glass on my desk waiting to be photographed. This species bit me four times in the night and it bit me again this morning when I woke up. It felt rather like a wasps sting and each bite has come up with a raised red patch which is really quite sore and very itchy. It's tender to the touch.
This spider is dark brown all over, though the legs are slightly more pale. The abdomen is nearly black. The abdomen is quite large with a dark stripe down the middle (I think it's female), it's almost cruciform in shape. It has quite distinct spinarettes. The fangs are rather small and not hugely obvious but the thorax is quite flattened at the front. The spider overall is about a centimetre in length. It seems to be quite a clean spider, it keeps cleaning its legs. It's not cigar shaped or flattened. It's more rotund.
I'm not arachnophobic or anything but I've really not had a lot of luck with spider bites. I've been bitten several times by wolf spiders in rural Spain and Bulgaria. I've also been bitten by a black widow (and it definitely was a black widow) whilst working in a zoo. I hadn't disturbed any of these spiders, at least not deliberately and thus I am becoming increasingly wary of them. I don't pick them up by hand anymore, even British house spiders which I know are harmless but still.
Both these spiders were found in southern England, specifically in Southampton. I've tried identifying them myself. I was wondering if the first one was Bruennichi's Argiope and the second a false widow spider? I'm not entirely convinced though...
Any help in identifying them would be most appreciated! I'm quite a keen naturalist!
I found an attractive spider in my garden, see the photograph attached. I'm intrigued as to what species it is because I've not seen anything quite like it anywhere else in Britain before. I saw a spider in Bulgaria in the Stara Planina Mountains that I am confident is the same species. It's got a huge orb-shaped web but I've not actually seen it catch anything yet. By huge I mean about 50cm in diameter.
Last night I found another spider that happened to be sharing my bed. It's now in a glass on my desk waiting to be photographed. This species bit me four times in the night and it bit me again this morning when I woke up. It felt rather like a wasps sting and each bite has come up with a raised red patch which is really quite sore and very itchy. It's tender to the touch.
This spider is dark brown all over, though the legs are slightly more pale. The abdomen is nearly black. The abdomen is quite large with a dark stripe down the middle (I think it's female), it's almost cruciform in shape. It has quite distinct spinarettes. The fangs are rather small and not hugely obvious but the thorax is quite flattened at the front. The spider overall is about a centimetre in length. It seems to be quite a clean spider, it keeps cleaning its legs. It's not cigar shaped or flattened. It's more rotund.
I'm not arachnophobic or anything but I've really not had a lot of luck with spider bites. I've been bitten several times by wolf spiders in rural Spain and Bulgaria. I've also been bitten by a black widow (and it definitely was a black widow) whilst working in a zoo. I hadn't disturbed any of these spiders, at least not deliberately and thus I am becoming increasingly wary of them. I don't pick them up by hand anymore, even British house spiders which I know are harmless but still.
Both these spiders were found in southern England, specifically in Southampton. I've tried identifying them myself. I was wondering if the first one was Bruennichi's Argiope and the second a false widow spider? I'm not entirely convinced though...
Any help in identifying them would be most appreciated! I'm quite a keen naturalist!
