I have decided to start a new, weekly feature* on my blog titled “SPIDERDAY!”. This will, fittingly, come on Saturday, and will be a bit of a round-up of stories about Arachnids from the previous week. I will include some images, links to neat Arachnid-themed blog posts and scientific papers, and bring other fun news about Arachnida. The pedants may be annoyed with “Spiderday” as a title to capture stories about all of the Arachnida (which includes mites, ticks, scorpions, harvestmen, etc.), but “Arachniday” doesn’t flow quite as nicely.

So, please enjoy, share, and let me know if you come across neat stories about Arachnids, and I will include them in next week’s Spiderday.

Here are some things I pulled from the “web” this past week:

• Lyme disease is a serious and important disease in many parts of North America, vectored by a type of Arachnid – a tick. Lyme disease awareness month is usually in May, but scientists are suggesting this ought to be moved one month earlier. This makes good sense. Education is key with Lyme Disease.
• Conservation of a rare spider in the UK – crowdfunding has been impressive, and the story of this “invisible spider” is making the news. And this is good news.
• Here’s a neat looking paper in the Journal of Zoology: Does body size predict foraging effort? Patterns of material investment in spider orb webs?
• The “Macromite” blog is back! Here’s a neat post and this can be filed under “more reasons why mites are odd”: Mesostigmata mites moult forwards! 
• A book all about the brown recluse spider. I think I shall have to buy this one! 
• Here’s a redescription of a Tarantula species from Brazil. It’s got a lovely name: Avicularia taunayi
• Here’s a paper from a couple of years ago that is worth looking at again: Bat predation by spiders. Yes, spiders eat ALL KINDS of things.
• Do you know some Arachnologists on Twitter? Let me know who they are and I will add them to this ever-growing list…. 
• I love this tweet by Arlo Pelegrin: it beautifully shows this amazing structure found on some spiders:

 

© C.M. Buddle (2015)

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*I’m not new to doing ‘regular features’ – I ran Expiscor for many months on this blog, and then did Segments on SciLogs for a while. However, I think an Arachnid-themed regular feature will have more staying power, and is a niche that needs filling, with eight-legged greatness.