Six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton)
Why would this little guy deserve to be spotlighted this month? We’re so glad you asked! Dolomedes triton was one of the 1,600 species that 800 of you helped document across the greater St. Louis metro area during the 2019 City Nature Challenge that occurred the last weekend in late April – here and in nearly 160 cities around the world.
While D. triton is worthy of a spotlight for so many reasons (it’s super-quick, it’s both predator and prey, and it’s really cool-looking), the honest reason we picked it is because of its common status. Six-spotted fishing spiders are one of those relatively ubiquitous life forms that can easily be spotted sprinting across the surface of our local creeks and streams. The fact that so many of our local City Nature Challenge citizen scientists documented D. triton and other little life forms all around them means that they were spending quality time in the great outdoors – closely observing little details, getting their hands and feet muddy, probably whispering and walking slower than usual. This makes our heart happy, and gives us hope for the world.
To do: Keep going, St. Louis! The local data collected during the 2019 City Nature Challenge automatically populated the BiomeSTL inventory on iNaturalist, a long-term project powered by citizen scientists who are helping document biodiversity across the bi-state. To date, more than 4,000 of you have contributed 57,000 observations representing more than 4,200 species that call the St. Louis region home. We encourage everyone to keep at it and recruit friends, family, colleagues, and random strangers to join you. Not only is iNaturalist a fun, slightly addicting outdoor hobby, the data produced is giving us all a better understanding of the what lives where, and can propel projects and actions that keep our local lands and waters full of life.