Untangling the mystic web...

Karrie Wu 

The sight of an unexpected large spider may make you catch your breath and even scream. However, I am rather curious to know why people fear spiders. Because of their rapid unpredictable movements, their ugly and hairy appearance, their bite or their eight long legs? Instead of fleeing in horror, I usually move in closer to take a look at these 'minibeasts', trying to explore their alien ways of life. Maybe it is why I agreed to work on spiders during my postgraduate study.

There are stories and beliefs concerning spiders all over the world. According to cultural differences, people's attitudes toward spiders are quite contradictory. Some believe that they bring good luck while others say they are symbols of evil. In early Chinese writing, spiders were mentioned with the toad, centipede, snake and scorpion together to form a group called "Wu Tu", which means the five poisonous animals. On the other hand, they are thought to possess wisdom because they often select the wooden tablets dedicated to Confucius as their web site!

I am not sure why there has been no work done on Hong Kong spiders since the publishing of the last and only series of papers written by Sherriffs in The Hong Kong Naturalist during the 1940s. Maybe everyone, including the ecologist, possesses some degree of 'Arachnophobia'! ? Sherriffs described 24 species occurring in Hong Kong, with simple taxonomic observations. However, the lack of reference to their habitat, web orientation or the localities where collected made the records a bit incomplete. Since almost nothing has been done on Hong Kong spiders, the first task is to discover what species are here. It is important to have an overview at an ecological level, such as which species are common or rare and when they are most active. Collection of ecological information is a must before we can perform detailed studies on a particular species on the spot. These are what my study is about.

I have been collecting spiders from four habitat types in Hong Kong: woodland, shrubland, grassland and wetland. From the 16 study sites (four sites for each habitat) I got over 300 morphospecies of spiders, by employing various sampling methods: beating, sweeping, hand collecting and pitfall trapping. Amongst the collection 23 families have been identified, and at least ten species have been found to be new to science by arachnologists in China. I applied DCA to ordinate the distributional data according to the species composition of the 16 sites and found that the sites of the same habitat formed a cluster, and four clusters could he distinguished clearly from the DCA plot. This implied that spider species composition is different among habitats. Besides the distributional study, I am also trying to figure out how meteorological factors (e.g. temperature, rainfall) and plant structure affect the spider community.

Arachnology (the study of spiders) is not a new topic in China. Most of the studies are associated with agriculture in which spiders act as control agents of insect pests. However, I am surprised to find that spiders in northern China have been studied while those in the southern part have been ignored. In this respect I hope my study can help, by at least making a collection of spiders from different habitats in Hong Kong before these are seriously diminished. Further collaboration and team work with the experts in China will be essential to explore the real scientific value of spiders.

P.20

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