Local spider expert Edward Milner writes:
I found a male specimen of the tiny money spider Tapinocyba praecox in my traps in this week from Circle Glade in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. This is a fairly scarce, largely winter-active species. Nearly all the males recorded in London (from about 10 other sites, including Hampstead Heath and Greenwich Park) have been from the winter months (December to March). This shows the value of all-year trapping. They are so tiny (the photo above is many, many times larger than the spider in life) and live at soil-level so are very difficult to find by other methods. I don’t know what they feed on – perhaps other spiderlings and very small springtails?
This is one of those spiders which I would expect to find (eventually), but after 12 years this is the first specimen from Cemetery Park! It brings the spider list for Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park to 154 species.
Header photo: Tapinocyba praecox by SNSB, Zoologische Staatssammlung Muenchen via CreativeCommons – Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2010) (CC) By-NC-SA
