Spiders Bring Good Luck

Another stage of spiders fauna count has come to an end. For the last year the researches added 42 new species to the list of the reserve inhabitants.

 Now there are 284 species, 145 genera and 23 families of these arthropods. One fifth of the list belongs to one family of Linyphiidae. These small and omnipresent species members dominate over other groups of spiders in temperate latitudes  by their amount and variety. Most Linyphiidae are tiny black money spiders, which from the first sight look absolutely like each other. And it is only under optical glass that you can see that all of them are absolutely different! It is their webs you see in our forests. These weightless mites happily fly on their webs clinging onto plants and clothes of passers-by. A popular superstition says that these guests bring good news and good luck. No wonder in English they are called money spiders.

In the upper image: a money spider in the bark crack, in the lower image: Linyphiidae web (photos by V.Kartsev)

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