Wildlife Sighting: Ice Spider

Photo by Kiki Contreras

Welcome to Wildlife Sightings! Even though we're focusing on spiders up here, we encounter all kind of cool critters on a daily basis. From here on out, every time we see a new plant or animal of note, we'll try and share a picture and a few words on the natural history with you.

We'd received a few reports from other researchers of wolf spiders running around on the few thawed patches of tundra, but we had yet to see it for ourselves. Until Wednesday, when I spotted a familiar eight-legged shape scurrying across the floor of our lab. This Wildlife Sighting isn't just about wolf spiders, it's about the first wolf spider. You'll be hearing a lot about spiders this summer, but we thought our first spider of the season deserved a special post.  The picture above was taken after multiple attempts to get it to hold still, but we think we ended up with a pretty good glamor shot!

-Kiki

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