Peacock Spider

The story begins at the end of 2009, I noticed a photograph on the photo sharing site flickr, taken one year earlier in 2008.  It appeared to show a colourful spider, found 40 km southwest of Canberra, not far from Sydney. The spider was an absolute gem, with so much blue on it. Blue is my favourite colour because it is the only one I can see properly. The spider looked strange. The first person who left a comment on this photograph called it “Transformer spider”. By now I had learned that there were believed to be at least 20 other species of Maratus in Australia, mostly undescribed ones. So could this be another new species belonging to this genus ? The photograph was labelled “Intricate beauty”, and that is exactly what it was.

In January 2010 I wrote to the photographer, Stuart Harris, telling him that the spider he photographed appeared to be new to science and that I would like to photograph it in the coming season. I asked him whether he could provide some more details about the locations. I did not have to wait long, the response came the same day, and it was positive. Not only was he willing to tell me about the location, he even wanted to take me there. However, it was January 2010, and from experience with peacock spiders around Sydney that is far too late, better to wait for the next spring. 

Stuart and I continued to exchange emails. I liked the way he expressed himself. Witty and entertaining, sometimes prosaic, he certainly had some writing skill. A couple of pictures on his flickr account alluded to his wide photographic interests, birds, rock concerts, people, mammals. I couldn’t help noticing several photographs of scantily dressed or even nude women and when asked about those Stuart replied “appreciation of beauty in general is my pursuit, whether it be in a spider, a bird or a beautiful woman”.  An interesting bloke I thought. 

Stuart was certainly excited by his discovery. Who doesn’t like to discover a new animal? But there was more to it. He lived in the nation’s capital, Canberra. The CSIRO, the nation’s research organisation, had its headquarters there, and it accommodated the Australian National Insect Collection, a top notch place when it comes to research on insects and other invertebrates. So Canberra and its surroundings, must be one of the best researched places in the country and yet this spider had not been described before.  

I was looking forward to meeting Stuart. Now it was July 2010 and I wanted to tell him about my plans for visiting him and the spider in September or October, but all of a sudden nothing, “Funkstille” as we say in German. Had he lost interest in the whole thing or did I said something he found objectionable?  Three months later in October I still hadn’t heard a peep from him and decided it was time to start looking by myself. At least there wouldn’t be any distraction. Stuart had given me enough info and I was certain to find the spider based on this description. By now I was quite confident in looking for peacock spiders, and finding them had become easy. Surely, if Stuart just found one by accident, without even searching for them, there would be hundreds and it would be a walk in the park.

I left Sydney at 3 am in the morning and arrived at the carpark for Booroomba Rocks, the location where Stuart had found the spider, around 8 am. I was a bit surprised how chilly it was. The place looked like the snow had just melted.  I walked up the track at my usual peacock spider search pace, examining everything that moved. I was paying attention in particular to the vegetation since Stuart had photographed the spider on a yellow leaf, and that plant looks rather conspicuous. Step by step, meter by meter I got closer to the end of the track at the top of the hill, but when I arrived I had found nothing.  Surely I would come across it on the way down.  Not so! I can’t remember how many times I went up and down the track, but each time it increasingly dawned on me that finding this spider might be more difficult than I anticipated. After 8 hours walking up and down, sunset approached and I had to throw in the towel as I still had to drive 5 hours back home. Disappointing. I attributed the failure to find this spider to the temperature, or the early season. 

A month later at the end of November I decided to try again. November is usually a very good month for peacock spiders, things are in full swing then and I was completely confident that this time I would find this spider. Same deal, I left Sydney at 3 am to make the most of the day. The weather was great, with a scattering of clouds, ideal for peacock spider hunting. The vegetation was really different this time around, the flowers were out, the insects were buzzing, everything was perfect. Except no blue spider, again! Now I needed Stuart’s help. 

I looked on Stuart’s flickr account to see whether there were any updates, perhaps there was an explanation for why he didn’t reply.  And there was an interesting comment he had left just hours earlier. He announced that his email account had been hacked and he had lost 16 years of emails and all his contacts, including mine. And now he was looking for the scientist (me!) who contacted him a year ago and asking him to get in touch. Coincidence?  Now we were back in business.

Stuart wanted to call the new spider Maratus harrisotto in honour of both of us. Interesting name I thought, but a little close to an Italian dish for my liking.  I explained that the name would be chosen by the person who described it and that I would send it to the Maratus expert in Perth. However, I said I was happy to put his suggestion to her, stressing that the whole process of naming this spider would require one thing we did not yet have, and that was a specimen. 

Stuart kept searching, he even roped some friends in to help with the search and apparently they once walked 17 km through pouring rain on their search. I also did my bit and had another look on my way back from a holiday in Tasmania. We both could not understand why it had been so rare, were we looking at the wrong place, the wrong habitat?  Did the population crash perhaps because of a bushfire and they were almost wiped out?  All the while we both wondered whether it had flaps like Maratus volans. It was impossible to see from the picture, but they are usually folded in and could have been hidden. What would we have given to find a specimen and seen its display. 

For me, I had had enough of the searching now and had put it already in the too hard basket. However, Stuart vowed not to give up, he was very determined. I couldn’t believe his persistence and dedication. I asked him whether he ever considered himself eccentric and he replied “Eccentric…mate, wouldn’t have it any other way…… I feel quite normal investing a lot of time in nature”. People often commented on my own persistence with things, but Stuart was in a different league altogether. 

We decided that we would give it one last try for this season, and this time together, on Australia Day, 26 January 2011. The forecast was for 37 degrees, rather hot but Stuart in his never ending optimism said that he had a good feeling about the day.  He called it inSTUition, and he said it had served him well. He said he saw a large band of cloud appearing from the SW on the radar, and he was sure it would be over us by lunch time.  I turned up and I still remember when I first saw Stuart thinking “OMG he is so big”, much taller and buffier than I expected. 

Stuart had a printout of his spider picture with him, so we could show it to other people on the track so they could also keep an eye open. He showed me the exact spot of his discovery, but despite many hours of searching we remained unsuccessful.  But it was a very insightful day for sure. We talked about his life, my life, taxonomy, how to name a species, Zorastrianism, and he asked me tons of questions. He was like a sponge, ever keen to absorb new information, as soon as I had answered one of his questions he had another one. I learned that he had been, amongst other things, a rubbish collector, and had found a suitcase full of sex toys once, that he had opened the car door for the Queen, that he pulled his grandmother out of a burning house, and that he now wanted to become a ranger. Well, in the end we did not find the spider but it was a delightful day. However, it was the last search for at least another 9-10 months. 

I didn’t hear much after our meeting and stopped thinking about the spider. But then on 21 October 2011 I got a phone call, completely out of the blue. Stuart sounded excited, and yes….. he had found it. Hard to believe at first, but it seemed to be true. I was on my way to Canberra the following day.  Stuart handed me over the spider and we looked again at Booroomba Rocks, for a female, which would have been a bonus of course. But even though no other specimen turned up, we were extremely happy. After a combined 250 hrs searching, our efforts had finally paid off. Such a relief. 

I was curious of course whether this peacock spider had flaps and if it had them what his  display to the female would look like. But you need a female to get him do his thing. Luckily Maratus males seem to be unable to distinguish between females of different Maratus species and I had previously had a lot of success with using Maratus volans so I thought I would give that a try.  However, it was risky. The female could easily pounce on the male and gobble him up, and not much could be done about it. I was nervous and made sure the female was well fed, giving her some extra crickets. It worked, and the moment came where the male raised his abdomen, expanded his flaps and then walked a few steps in either direction. I was happy indeed. His abdomen looked a bit like a monkey face, really fascinating. 

I kept playing with the two and was on a roll, but that is when carelessness starts to creep in. I had just taken a picture and now the male was gone. Not the first time this happened to me, and the thing to do here I learned over time is to keep calm. But harder said than done in this case,  knowing how difficult it had been to find this spider and what it meant to Stuart. I started to look around the room, taking my shoes off and looking underneath to see whether a flattened hapless body was stuck underneath. I looked at all my clothes, walking carefully around the whole house, with a torch even.  I can’t remember how long I searched, maybe it was minutes but it certainly felt like hours. I found it eventually, what a relief, but boy oh boy the thought of losing this animal was killing me. I decided to stop photographing and filming from hereon and to preserve the little fellow in ethanol so it could be described and deposited in a museum. 

I hadn’t planned to describe any new peacock spider species, I was more inclined to give the specimen to someone who had more experience. I had named over 100 species of mites before, and frankly got a bit tired of the whole process. However Stuart put so much effort into the search, it needed to be named after him, and it needed to be done fast, and the only way to guarantee the name and a quick turnaround was to take matters in my own hands.  I contacted David Hill. We had already published a couple of papers about peacock spiders together in Peckhamia, but it was an online journal and formal names needed to be published in print. Nobody ever had published a new species description in Peckhamia before, would it be possible ?  We came up with a solution that was accepted by the scientific community, by producing the online version and offering a print version on demand we could satisfy the formal requirements.

David quickly assembled the paper from my photographs and film footage and in no time sent me back a manuscript. It was different from the taxonomic papers I was used to, it was more descriptive and much better illustrated. Why not ? I liked his approach. We kept improving our manuscript and eventually published it on 1 December 2011, less than 6 weeks after Stuart gave me his specimen. This could well be a record time for a new species description, certainly much faster than the years it usually takes. The job was done! 

Stuart’s spider had a name now, Maratus harrisi. It was Stuart’s first peacock spider discovery, the first spider that David and I named, the first new species named in Peckhamia, and the first new peacock spider discovered in eastern in Australia in over 50 years. There was a lot to celebrate! But to get a real sense of what all this meant, in particular to Stuart, you need to know more about his background, his relationship with his grandmother and the way this spider discovery changed his life. And for that you should watch the ½ hour documentary that Simon Cunich later produced, called “Maratus: a documystery”. You can watch it on the ABC iview or rent it from Vimeo.