S is for spiders

24 Wednesday Dec 2025

Tags

Agalenatea redii, Agelena labyrinthica, Anyphaena accentuata, British spiders, Cheiracanthium erraticum, Eratigena species, Larinioides cornutus, Larinioides sclopetarius, Metellina segmentata, Pardosa species, Philodromus spiders, Platnickina tincta, Segestria florentina, spider, Steatoda nobilis, Zygiella x-notata

What a fabulous year this has been for new spider sightings, mostly inspired by the new spider guide book I bought with the financial support my local biodiversity records centre provides to its recorders. (I hope they’re pleased with the new records I’ve now provided.)

The image above is one of my new finds, Platnickina tincta (Spider: Platnickina tincta, 21 February), though this particular specimen was found very recently, on 14 December, on my local park railings. If you’re an arachnophile, you might enjoy perusing my list of this year’s finds; if not, I will completely understand if you prefer simply to scroll on. This year’s blogs: Spider: Steatoda nobilis, 25 March; Spider: Zygiella x-notata, 31 March; Spider: Larinioides cornutus, 7 April; Spiders: Philodromus species, 6 May; Spider: Segestria florentina, 21 May; Spider: Cheiracanthium erraticum, 31 May; Spider: Anyphaena accentuata, 4 June; Spider: Pardosa species, 11 June; Spider: Agelena labyrinthica, 9 July; Spider: Agalenatea redii, 9 September; Spider: Metellina segmentata, 20 September; Spider: Eratigena species, 13 October; and Spider: Larinioides sclopetarius, 28 October.

Spider: Zygiella x-notata

31 Monday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in spiders

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British spiders, Missing sector orb weaver, Silver-sided sector spider, Zygiella x-notata

I mentioned in a post last week (Spider: Steatoda nobilis, 25 March) that I’d had confirmation of my identification of two recent spider finds on my local park railings; this is the second of those spiders, Zygiella x-notata, also known as the Silver-sided sector spider.

Though I didn’t see it, this orb weaver is most well known for a singular feature of its web – for some unknown reason it always misses out one sector when constructing its circular web (you can see a photo of this on Wikipedia here), and so another of its common names is Missing sector orb weaver.

According to my guide book, these spiders are often found in places occupied by humans, so houses, sheds, and other types of building, as well as amongst vegetation in urban areas, and they are widespread around the world. The individual I found was too busy consuming its prey to be concerned with web building but I will look out for that distinctive web during future checks of the park railings.