Hate Spiders? This Won't Be Good News

As well as the more widely known problems associated with climate change and global warming such as drought, flooding, destruction of homes and resulting health issues due to lack of clean water and sanitation, there is now another problem to contend with. BIG SPIDERS!!

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit, but a team of Dutch scientists have carried out a study on the \"hairy meat-eating\" wolf spiders (Pardosa glacialis) of northeastern Greenland to see if longer summers meant they grew bigger. At present they can grow up to a length of 1.6 inches and have a life span of at least 2 years.

The study lasted for 10 yearsand founds that in years where spring was early, the spiders' exoskeletons were up to 10% thicker, resulting in a larger body size overall and the opposite was true in in colder years. At the end of the study, average exoskeleton thickness had increased by 2% - a large difference in such a short time.

Its not clear why global warming seems to be making the spiders bigger though there are theories that longer summers increase the prime hunting season and gives them more time to shed old exoskeletons, but nothing is known for certain. Females wolf spiders are now 2% larger than males on average which could give rise to bigger and more plentiful offspring.

On the bright side for arachnophobes however, as many spiders are cannibalistic it should help keep the population down.

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