Spider identification course

A peasant woman looking at some ballooning spider silk (for reasons currently lost on me, but probably to do with the fragility of life and impending death, that's art for you) in Chelmonski's painting 'Indian Summer'.

 If I ran a course I'd call it 'Sp- I.D.' But no-one would know what I was going on about, fair enough. I attended one this week in Shropshire, arranged by Manchester Metropolitan University. It was fundamentally about improving your identification of preserved specimens by using keys. So ideal to help me help you with your collections.

I discovered my pronunciation of some spider-bits had been a bit ropey (apparently it's cephalothorax with a hard c, and cry-bellum for cribellum). And I learnt a lot of interesting spider facts about their evolution, various types of silk, and strange habits. The tutors were both enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

I do think that I and the spider-students did very well earlier this year ourselves with the Collins key. We learnt a lot together. It was a steep learning curve.
 
But the good thing about this course was that I could finally ask someone experienced whether certain features were actually present or not - like the silk back-combing 'calamistrum'. When you don't really know what you're looking for you can start imagining things. It is the bane of the lone key-user.

A calamistrum - a cute row of neat bristles for fluffing up silk, sported by some spiders.

And it was good to get to the end of the key and be able to compare my identification with a confirmed name. It gives you a lot of confidence that you really are able to get somewhere. So I feel happier in my ability to help you now.


We were also shown the following:

The Arachnologist's Handbook by Tony Russell-Smith, Geoff Oxford and Helen Smith - it's £10 (free if you join the BAS) and includes lots of information about collecting, preserving and identifying. It also has an improved version of the Collins Spiders family key.

The Spider Bible is this one: Roberts' "Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland". It's very expensive and a bit over the top for your beginner. But the colour plates in volume 2 look amazing. Maybe we'll get a set one day.

This website: Araneae - Spiders of Europe is one I was unaware of before, and it's full of lovely clear close-up photographs. Probably best used once you've got some idea from the Collins key.

And this one: Les Araignees de Belgique et France has excellent photos and diagrams of the reproductive bits that you need to look closely at to to distinguish many species. I think this will be very useful to future spider-collectors.

Also I've just noticed a link to this, the Provisional Atlas of British Spiders v1, by Harvey, Nellist and Telfer. It has a map for each species and a bit of detail about each. There's also a good introduction which might come in handy for your monograph.

The spider figure of the mysterious Nasca Lines, Peru. CC image by Diego Delso.