Lauren Lane with fen raft spiderlings at Reaseheath College

Keepers at Reaseheath College’s zoo in Nantwich are fostering minute offspring of one of UK’s rarest and most spectacular spiders.

Four hundred fen raft spiderlings are being hand reared at the college for three months until they reach a suitable size for release.

It’s part of Natural England’s programme to secure the populations of some of Britain’s rarest native species.

Reaseheath and other members of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA), including Chester Zoo and Dudley Zoo, are involved.

The spiderlings are being kept in test tubes and fed with fruit flies and tiny invertebrates.

College staff and students of Reaseheath’s Herpetological Society are spending the summer recording data such as the size of spiderlings, the number of times they moult and the type of food they consume.

Fen raft spiders are a wetland species and have a leg span of up to 7cm when fully grown. They can walk on water and hunt for prey on the surface and under water.

It is found in three sites in east Sussex, East Anglia and south Wales.

Lauren Lane, the Reaseheath keeper in charge of the project, said: “This has been a rare privilege for Reaseheath to be involved with real conservation work, although very labour intensive!

“It is very rewarding rearing animals and actually getting to put them back into the wild. It has also been a great opportunity for staff and students to work alongside major conservation bodies.”

(Pic: Keeper Lauren Lane examines a fen raft spiderling)

Oi Sponsor us or else…

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Contribute MonthlyContribute Once

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website, to learn more please read our privacy policy.

*

Captcha * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.