Boxer

Philodromas dispar

Last month, I finally caught up with a spider that Mike first spotted in the garden a couple of years ago. The male Philodromas dispar is pretty distinctive: dark brownish-black with a white line running the length of its body on both sides, and yellowish legs. And how could you miss his big pedipalps, which look like a pair of boxing gloves held out in front of his face? These contain organs which allow the spider to "taste" and "smell", and the male also uses them for his courtship displays and to transfer sperm packets to the female. It's much harder to distinguish the female from several similar species. In fact, the books say you need a microscopic look at their sex organs to identify them, so I'm glad I found a male! He was scurrying along the edge of one of the flower beds, investigating the upper and undersides of leaves, weaving his way around stems and along vines, moving fast as he searched for prey. The species belongs to the family of "running crab spiders" – a group distinguished by their flattened shape and their particularly long second pair of legs. These spiders don't make webs, instead ambushing their prey. With a body that measures about 5 mm long (roughly 1/4-inch), it is said to be an "agile hunter" that tackles mostly flies and other smaller insects. It is found in various woody habitats, often near (and sometimes in) houses. It particularly likes the lower branches of trees and shrubs. The female uses silk to attach her eggs to a leaf, and guards them until the autumn, when the spiderlings hatch. They overwinter either in leaf litter (according to the UK Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme's website) or under bark (according to the Nature Spot website), emerging again in the spring. The species is common in southern England and Wales, as well as southern and western Europe. No doubt, we'll be seeing them again.