Jeremy Wilson is stabbing the red dirt with his pocketknife.
Every flick of the wrist brings him closer to his next find.
But, unlike the prospectors trying their luck in Western Australia’s northern Goldfields, Dr Wilson is not hoping to unearth a gold nugget.
He is looking for something that has eight legs, two fangs, silk-excreting glands, and still no name.
As a child, Dr Wilson, or “spider-man” as he is often called, had an irrational fear of arachnids, until he was bitten by curiosity.
“I have always been a little bit afraid of them, and that made me more interested,” he says.
Years of study have seen him become one of Australia’s most respected spider experts.
It’s also left him with a certainty spiders are misunderstood predators, who have little interest in hurting humans.
“They are really just trying to go about their lives,” he says.
So was the spider he pops into a vial.
It is a new species of burrowing spider, ready to move to the city.
This spider is not the only one to leave the comfort of its silk-lined burrow for the archives of a museum.
But it is a special one for Dr Wilson: a wishbone spider, a group he’s documenting for the first time.
To prey on, or to be preyed upon
Wishbone spiders get their name from their Y-shaped burrows.
They ambush their prey from the main entrance of their burrow, using their fangs like pickaxes.
But their one-foot-deep nests also have a secondary entry they use as an escape chute from invading predators.
These include wriggling desert centipedes.
“In my professional opinion, they [the centipedes] are the most evil of all invertebrates!” Dr Wilson exclaims, trapping one under a vial.
Silk-lined hiding places
Dr Wilson is one year into his quest to discover 100 wishbone spiders.
“We are still discovering species constantly,” he says.
He links his predilection for “creepy crawlies” to his fascination for the unknown.
“When you enjoy seeing new things, you are drawn to small things, because there’s so much still to discover,” he says.
Some of Dr Wilson’s “digs” are not that little.
He lets a tarantula the size of a mandarin out to stretch its eight, velvety legs.
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Dr Wilson says tarantulas, like other burrowing spiders, are common in Australia, but hiding in their silk-lined homes, they are often missed.
Returning to the wishbone spider Dr Wilson has just uncovered, the male has spurs to clasp female spiders during mating, but also longer legs to help traverse the desert looking for mates.
During such a love quest, a male wishbone spider fell into a bucket trap set by a reptile team on the same expedition as Dr Wilson.
Piecing together an ecosystem
One of the benefits of the Bush Blitz, the new-species discovery program that brought Dr Wilson to the Goldfields, is having experts from different fields working together.
“It means you have more eyes on the ground,” Bush Blitz manager Jo Harding says.
Back at base camp, scientists from all over Australia share big tables covered in vials.
Their findings are interrupted only by debates between splitters, who focus on the smallest differences, and lumpers, who prefer broader categories, when they classify new species.
Each piece of information about animals or plants comes together to form a clearer image of the ecosystem.
Tjiwarl rangers helped guide the scientists in their search for new species.
When Dr Wilson told the Tjiwarl rangers he was looking for trapdoor spiders, they suggested he look under mulga trees on the lowland floodplain areas.
“They took me there and there were trees with 10 or 15 trapdoor spiders under them, populations I have never seen before,” he says.
“It helped me get specimens that might be important for future study.”
Tjiwarl ranger Maurveen Muir says it’s good to have the group’s knowledge officially noted.
“We walk through the bush, and we see these things,” she says.
“But having them actually recorded is far better.”
‘What’s in a name?’
Jo Harding says only about a quarter of Australia’s biodiversity is named.
“Seventy-five per cent of Australia’s biodiversity … we know nothing about.”
She explains that, if something doesn’t have a name, it can never be properly managed or protected.
WA’s resource-rich Goldfields was chosen by Bush Blitz as it was identified as a “gap-in-knowledge” area, which scientists now know more about.
Most spiders live only in specific habitats; preserving those areas preserves them.
“It’s important we go to those areas to study [so we] can inform companies to make educated decisions on their operations,” Dr Wilson says.
Having a name is what puts a species on a rare and threatened or weed and pest list.
The new species of wishbone spider unearthed by Dr Wilson will soon have one.
“I’m going to have to get my Latin dictionary and find inspiration,” he smiles.
