Passage Two
Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.
Spiders make their presence felt in late August and through early autumn. This is the mating season of some
of the most common varieties, when male house spiders come out of hidden corners to look for females, and
garden spiders reach adult size and spin their most dazzling webs.
Yet while the spider is a familiar fixture of nursery poems or songs and Halloween decorations, its
relationship with humans is complicated. Fear of spiders is common and has serious impacts on the lives of
sufferers. Its prevalence appears unrelated to any rational assessment of risk. Spiders in the UK are almost all
harmless. Farmland species perform valuable ecosystem services, by preying on insects that are our competitors
for crops. But they are a constant source of human anxieties—with a cultural association with witches and
wickedness dating back to the middle ages.
Does this perhaps explain, in part, the lack of data about how spiders are faring in our age of ecological
crisis? British butterflies are the most studied group of insects in the world, due to the long tradition of collecting
and observing them. But spider conservationists point out that it was only in the 1980s that the classification
of house spiders was properly sorted out. And while information about insect populations is gathered by
experiments that measure the numbers hiting windscreens or traps, there have been few attempts to count
spiders
The huge reductions in the numbers of flying insects can only mean a reduction in spiders' food supply.
A recent landmark study identified a 75all in insect populations between 1989 and 2016, with pesticide use

thought to be to blame along with the destruction of wild arcas for development. This means the overall picture
for spiders is worrying, as it is for most creatures. But conservationists are most concermed about those varieties
that are threatened due to habitat loss and fragmentation, which makes it impossible for them to migrate.
Of around 650 spider species regularly recorded in the UK, the majority thrive in marshes and wasteland.
Conservation efforts, often led by determined individuals, have helped some species to recover by reintroducing
them to new areas. With rewilding now firmly on the environmental policy agenda, the hope is that in future,
spiders will be enabled to migrate by themselves, adapting to climate change by moving along wildlife corridors.
It seems unlikely that spiders will ever attract the same level of human enthusiasm as bees, birds or
butterflies, in spite of their unique status as nature's spinners. But as they reveal themselves in all their splendour
this autumn, it would be a good thing if more animal lovers recognised the ways in which spiders are simply
terrific.