Spider season! Ten species you’ll see scuttling across Britain’s carpets and lawns this autumn

Summer is at an end, and suddenly spiders seem to be everywhere – in your house, in your garden, in your hair. Fresh webs hang from doorways, walls, shrubs and fence posts, creating invisible obstacle courses. Where do all these spiders come from, what kind are they and what, if anything, should we do about them?

The short answer to the question “Why are there so many more spiders at this time of year?” is: there aren’t. They are just more obvious. Dave Clarke, an ectotherm (“cold-blooded” animal) specialist at the Zoological Society of London, says: “There are more spiders around in the spring, because that’s when they hatch from their egg sacs, and there are hundreds of babies in each egg sac. But they’re small and not very obvious. They grow up during the summer and, at this time of year, they reach their maximum size.” Their webs are also correspondingly larger.

The other reason they are more apparent is that they are finding their way indoors in the desperate search for a mate. Dr Sara Goodacre, professor of evolutionary biology and genetics at the University of Nottingham, says: “The ones you see in your home at the minute, the really big, fat, hairy ones, they’re usually teenage males that are lost – emotionally, geographically – and are just hoping they might find a female so they can continue the life cycle.”