After a busy summer, and a lot of time away, I’m pleased to start up Spiderday again. Here are some arachnid-themed links pulled from the web over the past couple of weeks.

Here’s a nice looking spider – it’s a Selenops. There is exciting new research about these critters! (photo by Sean McCann)

• The photo, above, provides a segue to my read of the week: some species of neotropical spiders don’t just ‘fall’ from trees, they can ‘glide’ and use their flat bodies as a type of sail to redirect them to the tree trunks. Wow…. just WOW. Here’s one take on this story, and here’s the original paper.
• Nice spiders finish last – and determine the fate of the colony. Some really neat research about colonial spiders.
• Tooting my own horn here: I was thrilled to see quite a lot of interest about our research on the effects of insecticides on jumping spider personalities.
• Here is a Festschrift of interest: The life and times of Africa’s First Lady of Arachnology, Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman.
• Male wolf spiders do some eavesdropping. 
• Another tiny dancer (peacock spiders…. of course!)
• If you don’t follow the Biodiversity Heritage Library, you really should. Case in point:

• An important statement about tick-borne diseases, put out by the Entomological Society of America.
• More about Lyme – here is a post about some important new research on how/why the disease symptoms vary so much, and treatment implications.
• On varroa mites, honey bees, and pesticides. It’s complicated.
• Confusion in the world of Arachnology: Opiliones (harvestmen) or Mite? (Acari)????
• Bioindicators with eight legs: water mites can help inform us about water quality (oh, insects can do that too)
• Tooting my own horn again: It was so wonderful that CBC science & technology picked up my story about pseudoscorpions and wrote a nice piece on these animals. Curiosity, passion and arachnology FTW.
• Here’s a wonderful video about arthropods of homes, in Peru. It’s here because there is loads of great spider coverage: