Is global warming making Ireland a more attractive place for spiders?
The Discover Spider Challenge was launched last year during Science Week. Primary school children all over Ireland were asked to report spider sightings in their homes.
Students from St Louis School in Dublin researched different types of spiders using online images to aid their study.
You can look at all the different parts in the spider.
Scientists are trying to establish if certain spiders are becoming more common in Ireland because of slightly higher temperatures due to global warming. Dr Simon Harrison who lectures in ecology in University College Cork [UCC] says that in the future,
We may have a lot more pest species coming up from southern Europe.
Seventeen hundred schools participated in the study, and every county in Ireland is represented.
More spiders were recorded in southern counties than northern ones. As environmentalist Éanna Ní Lamhna explains, this could be due to the number of recorders or
It's warmer in the south of the country than it is in the north.
Results of the study organised by the national awareness programme of Discover Science and Engineering will now be assessed in relation to global warming in Ireland.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 28 January 2005. The reporter is Paul Cunningham.
