In terms of its natural habitat, what is the world’s northernmost spider?

Bubblecar said:

In terms of its natural habitat, what is the world’s northernmost spider?

Does that question include all arachnids?

Just spiders, lad.

this won’t answer your question

Bubblecar said:

In terms of its natural habitat, what is the world’s northernmost spider?

I believe that the northernmost spiders would be those found in the Cold Stone Creamery, 930 Old Steese Highway in Fairbanks, Alaska.

What a stupid question. Who cares about this… pull your socks up.

As has been widely noted, the Arctic is much richer in flora than the Antarctic. From what I learned on the other thread, it seems likely that there are no spiders within the Antarctic circle, or even south of 60 deg S.

Meanwhile there are stacks of spiders in the Arctic, not least of all the Arctic wolf spider. Even the very northernmost skerricks of land on earth (Svalbard and the tip of Greenland) have small spiders.

Further to this:

The most northerly part of the Svalbard archipelago is the Sjuøyane islands. I find a reference to a spider on these islands: Collinsia spetsbergensis. (Hauge, E. & Somme, L. 1997 Records of spiders (Aranaea) from Nordaustlandet and Sjuoyane, Svalbard. Fauna norv. Ser. A 18, 17-20.)

Although there may be other spiders on Sjuøyane that have simply not been recorded yet, I think we can say that there are no spiders more northerly than C. spetsbergensis on the Svalbard archipelago.

Now, working around anticlockwise…

I have a reference to Emblyna borealis

http://eol.org/pages/1201226/maps

showing E. borealis existing at a location at around 24 W 80.7 N. This would put it just about exactly level with the most northerly part of Sjuøyane. Other references indicate its range is “all Greenland” but this seems bold.

Erigone psychrophila has been found in the northern parts of Severnaya Zemlya, possibly further north than 81 degrees.

Okay, the following will beat all contenders from Severnaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, or Svalbard.

LEECH, R. E. 1966. The spiders (Araneida) of Hazen Camp 81 49’N, 71 18’W. Quaestiones
Entomol. 2: 153-212.

There is also a reference to Hazen Camp in Return to Warden’s Grove: Science, Desire, and the Lives of Sparrows by the biologist Christopher Norment. He says “a thought that leads, somehow, into a meditation on several spiders that live on Ellesmere Island, at almost 82 degrees north, less than six hundred miles shy of the North Pole. At Hazen Camp, at the northern end of Ellesmere Island, there is a small community of spiders that is active only when the continuous summer sun moves behind Mt McGill, which rises almost three thousand feet above the valley that holds the arctic oasis surrounding Lake Hazen. Then the lowlands are filled with mountain shadows that last for a minimum of four to six hours. These spiders, mostly Typhochraestus latithorax and Minyriolus pampia, avoid the full light of the sun, which at this latitude does not set for more than eighteen weeks.”

So, Car, at this stage it seems T. latithorax and M. pampia are in the lead.

Although I can’t find any journal references to spiders further north on Ellesmere than Hazen, this Canadian Air Force page on the Alert station makes a momentary mention of spiders in the area. It doesn’t say which spiders, and is a little ambiguous so may not be talking of the immediate area of the station.

http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/8-wing/alert.page

Many types of birds nest here in the summer, but are gone by September. They include glaucous and ivory gulls, longtailed jaegers, sandpipers, turnstones, knots, snow buntings, oldsquaws, and occasionally snow geese. Although insect life seems to be almost non-existent, spiders, deer flies and warble (blue) flies abound on Ellesmere Island. In some areas, large numbers of small flies swarm a few inches above rocks on hillside heated by the sun, but they are not bothersome.

Bubblecar, this all leaves only one possible area: the northern part of Greenland and the small island of Kaffeeklubben.

I have not been able to find out much about this. There is a work called The Spiders (Araneida) of Peary Land, North Greenland. Meddelelser om Grønland Vol 159 No 6. by Braendegård, J.

Peary land lies mainly further north than the tip of Ellesmere. I haven’t read this publication but its existence does at least imply that there are in fact spiders in Peary Land.

Ta. I imagine these spiders would be quite small.

Good. They won’t need copious amounts of Mortein to kill them then :)

Divine Angel said:

Good. They won’t need copious amounts of Mortein to kill them then :)

If they were big and meaty they could have helped sustain all those stranded Arctic explorers.

Bubblecar said:

Ta. I imagine these spiders would be quite small.

Although there are are larger spiders in the Arctic, these ones in the very high Arctic (further north than 80 deg N) are indeed all very small.