Mumbles Cave Spiders

Tom has been walking between Mumbles and Sketty today. On the trip he stopped off at Clements Quarry- an SSSI for the Black Lias Limestone (the quarry also acts as the Oystermouth long stay car park) that contains a small cave just big enough for someone to crouch in.

Left: the entrance of the cave in the Clements Quarry, right: the inside of the cave. 

While originally he went in search of old lady moths and heralds that are beginning to hibernate for winter, instead he found a colony of cave spiders. The long-jawed orb weaver spider (also known as the orbweaving cave spider) Meta menardi is a widely, but patchily distributed spider that lives exclusively in caves and dark places.

Meta Menardi. Left: a large specimen on its web placed on the roof of the cave, top right: the same spider next to an egg sac, bottom right: a spider on the limestone wall of the cave.

The spiders were also accompanied by their egg-sacs that hung down from the cave ceiling as little white parcels.

Top: a cave spider egg-sac, bottom: the cave ceiling with numerous spiders and egg sacs, including the shed exoskeleton of a a large spider in the top right of the photograph.

The New Naturalist on Gower (Mullard 2006) describes their distribution as only ever being found at Worm's head but he suspects (correctly) that they are more widespread in Gower caves.

For more information on this cave spider species visit:  Click here