Spider drawings

With one week to go before handing in, I realise this is a bit late for most arachnid fans. But perhaps it will be useful for the future.

I've found an online British spider key written by L Watson and M J Dallwitz. There's a conventional dichotomous version that looks similar to ones in the books, but also an 'interactive' key that allows you to pick out various characteristics you do know, and ignore the ones you don't. The interactive key requires you to download a little bit of software and has much information (it also prioritises the most important characteristics). I've not used it yet with a spider but I think it looks quite hopeful (even in my beginner's stage).

Blackwall's drawing of Dysdera crocata, borrowed from here.

What caught my attention this morning are the drawings of species, which you can see without going through the key by clicking the different family names on this page. They're by John Blackwall, who was an arachnologist working in the 1860s (they come from his books on "A history of the spiders of Great Britain and Ireland"). The taxonomy has changed since his time, but the authors of the key have done their best to associate the drawings with contemporary names.

Of course not every spider you might like to see will be there. But at the moment it's useful for me to see different illustrations of the species, to try and build up a mental picture of them. The colour illustrations in the Collins guide are nice, but with their splayed stance and crazily overlapping legs you don't get a very good idea of how the spiders look in real life. Blackwall's illustrations are rather jaunty.

But for more conventional 21st century illustrations, you can see photographs of reliably identified spiders on the Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme website (scroll down on the species page as there may be many photos at the bottom).