trapdoor

Scientists at the University of California, Davis report the discovery of a previously unrecognized trapdoor spider that lives in California's coastal sand dunes.

Trapdoor spiders are small, secretive relatives of tarantulas.

"There are now four known species of trapdoor spiders in California that live exclusively in coastal dune habitats," said corresponding author Emma Jochim, a doctoral student in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

"The one we were looking at as part of this study was the most widespread, ranging from Moss Landing near Monterey down to Baja California -- which is a pretty wide range for a trapdoor spider, given that they don't easily leave their burrows to disperse."

Apart from the first 51 days of his captivity, during which he and an abducted Thai worker are held in the private house of a Gazan family, Mr. Sharabi spends all his time as a hostage in two different tunnels, the first of which he enters from a trapdoor under a rug in a mosque, the second from an entrance in the floor of a house.