A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
In the first of our features speaking to world-leading academics who ply their trade at York, we met up with Dr. Geoff Oxford from the Department of Biology to discuss spiders.
With stories bounding about in various local papers that York academic Dr. Geoff Oxford was investigating the whereabouts of a super spider, The Yorker was straight on the case.
“The story is pretty much made up by the newspapers - there is no 'super spider'”, Dr. Oxford told us. He explained that whilst two forms of house spider do come together in Northern England to make a hybrid, this hybrid is almost identical to its parents; not “bigger, faster, and more fierce” as certain newspapers suggest.
In fact, his work is much more interesting than hunting for a mythical spider. Dr. Oxford is currently researching large house spiders, some of the largest spiders you or I are likely to encounter in the UK. Measuring up to 60mm across the legs, with bodies of up to 16mm, these certainly are fascinating creatures.
Dr. Oxford has found that whilst the two main species of large house spiders in the UK (Tegenaria gigantea, ‘gigantea’ of course meaning large, and Tegenaria saeva, ‘saeva’ meaning fierce) live together in the north, there is an east-west split in the south, with T. gigantea living in the south and east of England and T. saeva living in the south west and Wales.
Indeed what’s more bizarre is the discovery of another form of house spider, usually found in Southern Ireland and continental Europe in towns to the south of Newcastle. The ability of these continental spiders to colonise an otherwise unremarkable area of the North East continues to raise questions.
Dr. Oxford, president of the British Arachnological Society, is one of main pioneers of the ‘fishing’ technique which is used to catch Large House spiders. To catch them, he places a maggot in the webs, which can take over entire corners of a room, and waits for the spider to come out to eat its prey. “Just like an angler” he points out.
Our attention then turned to some common misconceptions about spiders. We talked about whether there are more spiders bigger than ever before, which tends to appear in the newspapers around this time of year. Dr. Oxford told The Yorker that this story is likely a reflection of the fact that some common female spiders will be full of eggs at the end of autumn. This gives them the appearance of being significantly larger.
Indeed, contrary to popular belief, there is also no evidence to show that Large House spiders come in over the cold period seeking warmth. Indeed it is likely that they are simply more visible to humans, as the males scurry around looking for females.
There is also no particular evidence that the house spider prefers living in houses rather than outside, where they to spin their webs in dry stone walls, tree cavities and rabbit burrows. Furthermore the idea that the spiders you put outside “come back” is also unlikely; Dr. Oxford told us that you’re probably just seeing other spiders. You’d be surprised how many are living with you in your house!
If you would like more information on this topic, do visit the British Arachnological Society website at http://www.britishspiders.org.uk/
I haven't seen any recently, but when I first came to my house in York we used to find about one of those large house spiders per day somewhere or another in the house, but I must admit I haven't seen one since about October or early November. At home, I almost never ever saw spiders like that, in fact I only saw one like that once. And yes, I must admit I am scared of spiders. There's just something about how they look and how they move, especially the large ones because I think I read that they move among the fastest in the world, so seeing a little brown or blackish thing with (far too many) pointy legs and a horrifying face scurrying across the room as fast as it can is just terrifying... :(
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