It’s that time of the week – SPIDERDAY! Your round-up of Arachnid links. Enjoy!

Tarantula! Wonderful illustration from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

• On the topic of Tarantulas, we had exciting news in our house this week…
• On the natural history and biology of some relatively rare orb-web spiders. This is most certainly my Read of The Week.
• A wonderful story: a shipment to a previous house owner ends up being a ‘return to sender’ parcel – this surprises the new homeowner because it contains an ill-looking tarantula. He is concerned, and takes it to a rescue centre (that’s a good-hearted person!)
• Here is a fabulous resource for identifying brown widow spiders. They can be tricky…
• A fascinating paper about factors affecting genotyping with spiders: this work relies on museum specimens. Another reason for vouchers…
• For those with an interest in Salticidae taxonomy, Wayne Maddison and company published a reinterpretation of a jumping spider genus, Thiodina.
• Here is some lovely spider art:

• Spider bots are coming from you. Goofy and terrifying, all at once 🙂
• I was reminded of this post, and paper, about how insects are crustaceans. So, how to Arachnids fit in? They remain ‘chelicerates’, of course.
• On daddy-long-legs (Harvestmen) – “THAT IS NO SPIDER!”
• My research on Arctic pseudoscorpions was featured in “Yukon North” – Ice-age relics lurk along the Dempster
• Spiders tune their webs.
• Speaking of webs, here’s a nice little video showing a lovely jumping spider looking after its web. So cute!