You too may well find something interesting

Student B's exotic arachnid friend

This time last year I reported on an ex-taxonomic collectioner who had found a very rare and lovely lichen. You see, how many people are actually looking for these things? Not many. Most are watching ITV2 and playing games on their phones. And even the ones who are interested, are generally happy enough to leave their identification at "lichen" or maybe "some sort of Usnea lichen". But (unless it's really difficult to tell and drives you mad) there's much satisfaction to be had from being able to pin down the exact species.

This week, Student B brought in a cute little jumping spider (family Salticidae) which he'd found living somewhere at the zoo. There are 38 species in this country. But it wasn't any of those - it had very distinctive white pedipalps (which it was waving about) and lovely little spots on its abdomen. Not really knowing where to begin as there are a lot of jumping spiders in the world, we both asked on internet forums (I don't think this counts as cheating in this case). And it seems to be Hasarius adansoni, a common-enough creature in warmer parts of the world like Australia and Japan.

Come and use the lovely microscope camera with your finds- drop me an email.

I looked it up on the Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme website, and they only have 3 records of it in this country (ever), so I am urging Student B to send in his sighting. Maybe it's living everywhere and nobody's noticed - but maybe it's not. Certainly nobody else has ever reported it from Bristol Zoo. So be encouraged - you really can add to the knowledge we have about the species in this country. You don't have to find anything so exotic of course - even reporting common species is important to provide data about how their numbers and distribution might be changing, or the times of the year that they're active. It's all useful and feeds into a bigger picture.


Meanwhile - I had word from an ex collector of bryophytes, Student H. She's currently on a Bog Conservation placement in the Pennines. She's become so enamoured with the mosses there, that she's set up her own Instagram moss page. How cool is that. It makes me feel very happy. Fluffy and feathered creatures already have a lot of supporters. You can make a difference for the more weird and wonderful plants and animals of this country.

The lovely Sphagnum fimbriatum, CC James Lindsay.