Labyrinth

While working in the garden yesterday, I found this rather fearsome beastie chopping up a caterpillar that had strayed onto its web. It's a Labyrinth Spider (Agelena labyrinthica), which builds a big sheet web with a large funnel low in the vegetation. According to Britain's Spiders, they often build their webs in gorse, heather or brambles, but this one had chosen an as-yet-unidentified plant along the edge of the flower border. (It's only in leaf at the moment, and we can't remember what we planted there!) The Labyrinth Spider is a widespread species in southern England and Wales, but only rarely found north and west, and missing completely from Scotland and Ireland. It's not QUITE as big as it looks here; its body was probably only about 1/2 an inch (8-9 mm)  long, though its long legs made it seem much bigger. Its dark abdomen with the pale medial stripe and pale chevrons is distinctive, as is its carapace (the front end) with the alternating bands of light and dark (light on the lateral edges and the center, with darker stripes between). The large pedipalps (those "boxing gloves" extending from the front of its body) suggest that it's a male. These appendages, which are used in sperm transfer, are considerably larger and more swollen in shape in males than in females.