New Zealand flower crab spider

Spiders don't swim or fly, so how did they get to New Zealand originally?

New Zealand is famous for its endemic wildlife.  Kiwis, tuataras, keas, and many more.  There are also various endemic spiders and insects.  The above photo is of a New Zealand flower crab spider, similar to the ones I have photographed and written blogs on before (click here for an example).

New Zealand is a remote island that is over 1500 km away from Australia.  Some islands, like Hawaii, formed from volcanic activity and have never been attached to other continental masses.  New Zealand, however, used to be part of the supercontinent of Gondwanaland and was specifically attached to Australia and Antarctica.  However, they separated about 85 million years ago.  

It turns out that the flower crab spiders of New Zealand are closely related to the ones in Australia.  Over the last 85 million years, New Zealand has been slowly moving away from its larger relative.  So, the spiders either were already present on the moving island or they arrived after the fact.

True spiders have been around for about 300 million years.  So it is likely that they may have been present at the time of separation.  However, spiders have an incredible ability to "fly" over long distances through ballooning.  This is done using their silk glands; young spiders will hold onto a substrate (branch, for example) and release a long stream of silk.  When caught by the wind, the spider will let go of the substrate and be carried away by the wind (I did a blog on spider silk here).  The prevailing winds blow eastward from Australia to New Zealand; so it is very possible that these gossamer spiders may have been transported across the dividing water.  

It is interesting that flower crab spiders aren't associated with web spinning, as many of their cousins are, but they can still produce webs that are used for producing egg sacks or ballooning.  Whether the spiders came from Australia by way of a land connection or air can be debated, but the fact that they have been there for millions of years cannot.

Now, isn't that interesting?

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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