Fen Raft spider (Dolomedes plantarius)
‘Yummy mummy needs a little extra support’ One of Britain’s biggest, most handsome (OK, maybe it helps if you are a lady spider) and most endangered spiders, the Fen Raft spider has a characteristic cream or yellow stripe along both sides of its body. Typically living on the edge of pools in fen and marshlands, the spiders lie in wait for their prey, with their front legs out on the water, ready for action. Once a suitable titbit has been spotted, the spider literally glides across the water surface to grab it. Although they prefer to eat other smaller spiders or insect larvae, tadpoles and even fish are on the menu.
Female Fen Raft spiders are brilliant mothers, and are sometimes known as ‘nursery web spiders’. They carry their egg sac around for 3 weeks, tenderly dipping it in the water every three hours to keep it moist; then before hatching the female makes a nursery web, a tent of silk, in which the spiderlings can spend the first week of their life, until they are ready to enter the big world.
Only discovered in 1956, the Fen Raft spider has only been found in parts of the fens on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, the Pevensey Levels in East Sussex and a disused canal near Swansea. The biggest threats to its future are changing water levels, especially from land reclamation, but also rising sea levels.
Your gift of £12.00 will help us to work with partners in the fenland area to create new homes suitable for this magnificent and maternal spider, who requires a very special place to live and hunt.
The Give and Let Live Scheme is supported by our friends at Miller Philanthropy with additional thanks to Nick Roberts Design for the illustrations.
