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REPORTS OF MEETINGS
GENERAL MEETING, SPIDERS IN THE DANBURY AREA
15th September, 1984
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The complex of heath and woodland around Danbury
is almost ideal for bringing the uninitiated face
to face with the common spiders. A small
gathering of members was led around the Backwarden
Reserve and Blakes Wood on a dull, but mild day
in September with the purpose of demonstrating
just how successful this group of animals can
be in exploiting a wide range of microhabitats.
In the gorse scrub and heather of the Backwarden
Reserve, the first webs which drew our attention
were the large sheet webs of Linyphia, and the orb
webs of Araneus. The Garden Spider (Araneus
diadematus) has probably been familiar to us all
since childhood, with its web of sticky spirals
on a spoke-like silk framework. In autumn males
and females become adult and mate, the females
soon swelling with eggs and becoming very
conspicuous. Another orb-web spinner of the same
family, Zilla diodia, was found amongst heather
on the Backwarden Reserve, though right at the end
of its season.
The genus Linyphia is one of the few containing
relatively large spiders in the family Linyphiidae.
This is Britain's largest family of spiders by
far. Most of the species are tiny (1-3 mm. long)
and somberly coloured. Known better as 'money
spiders' most live inconspicuously in small sheet
webs spun in long grass, low vegetation, leaf
litter and so on. Linyphia triangularis was
undoubtedly the commonest large linyphiid we
found at Danbury. We were able to see how effect-
ive its web was at stopping the flight of insects
and preventing them from regaining their balance
while the spider attacks them through the web from