City Nature Challenge: how Hong Kong can show its spirit of discovery – and maybe find something new
- Hong Kong-based Stefan Obenauer hopes his discovery of a previously unknown jumping spider will encourage others to join in this year’s City Nature Challenge
- Participants can take photos of plants and animals at a park, on the beach, on their way to work or school – anywhere they can find nature
This year biologist Stefan Obenauer realised a 15-year dream when he got to name a species – in this case, a jumping spider – he discovered in 2017 while walking near the Dragon’s Back in Shek O, a popular mountain hike on the south side of Hong Kong Island.
To help identify it, Germany-born, Hong Kong-based Obenauer reached out to Dr Dmitri Logunov, an expert on jumping spiders at the Manchester Museum in Britain, who confirmed in the Israel Journal of Entomology that the species was unknown to science.
The 3mm spider, which has incredible vision, was typical of the jumping spider family in that it did not spin webs to entangle prey, but rather stalked small insects and similar animals on foot, jumping at them from a distance. This sort of hunting behaviour earned them the tag “eight-legged cats”.
But what made this one different was its resemblance to the brown, bristly haired caterpillars also found in the area where the spider was discovered, leading to it being named Uroballus carlei (nickname Carley). This is a tribute to Eric Carle, the American author of children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar that this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, the same year Carle turns 90.
There’s no doubting Obenauer’s commitment to documenting nature. “I had thousands of pictures taken over a decade stored on my PC,” says Obenauer. “But it seemed a waste to have them sitting there doing nothing, not helping anyone.”