Hip Hip Hooray! It’s Spiderday! I’ve snared some of the best arachnidy links from this past week. But first… a big hug for you:

A spider hug.

• A spider species rediscovered in the UK, after over 100 years. A wonderful way that using “the web” can help science. My Read Of The Week.
• How do you trap a trap-door spiders? Use a lure, of course. What a great idea!
• We all know spiders as predators… but things eats spiders too. Here’s an overview of when spiders are prey.
• Magic spiders: Here’s some wonderful science about how a spider lures moths by using sexy smells.

A jumping spider found for the first time in Canada: Myrmarachne formicaria (photo by V. Levesque-Beaudin, reproduced here with permission)

• At the Grant Museum the “Specimen of the week” is an Opiliones. Lovely critters - and cousins to the other arachnids.
• On birds, lice, mites and a complicated, wonderful series of natural history notes and questions, from Heather Proctor.
• Burying beetles are well known for carrying passengers. These passengers are mites.
• Speaking of mites as passengers, here’s a paper that shows “Flies that are burdened by mites are expected to exhibit lower flight endurance compared to uninfected flies.” Yes… flies carry mites too.
• The world checklist of Quill Mites. Awesome.
• Here’s what tick eggs REALLY look like.
• Here’s a video to accompany that last link - the life cycle of sheep tick, observed in laboratory conditions - this is kind of cool and kind of gross all at the same time: