This summer a new species of spider was discovered at one of Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves. Joshua Styles, an ecologist and botanist who has featured as a presenter on Countryfile, made the chance find while he was helping the Trust with a vegetation survey at Black Firs and Cranberry Bog reserve.

The spider, a Gnaphosa nigerrima, has only been known to inhabit one other place in the UK before.

Joshua said: “It was any normal day for me during summer, doing a botanical survey at Black Firs and Cranberry bog. That was before I noticed a fleck of velvety black in the corner of my eye. Only a few weeks previous I remember seeing news about one of the rarest spiders in Britain, Gnaphosa nigerrima, known only from Wybunbury Moss. I caught the spider for photographs, just because it looked so incredibly similar.

“Later down the line, that spider was found out to be the very same species, the second ever British site! Although it might not have been a plant, it was really exciting!”

Wybunbury Moss has a very similar landscape to Black Firs and Cranberry Bog, it’s situated just over four miles away near Nantwich and is a National Nature Reserve owned and managed by Natural England.

Jeff Sim, Head of Nature Reserves and Species Recovery, said: “We’re really excited by this discovery, and thankful for Joshua’s eagle eye!

“Black Firs and Cranberry Bog is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance. It’s very fragile and there is no public access to the area where the spider was found as it's such a dangerous site with a floating raft of peat over an eight-metre-deep pool. However, this is the perfect habitat for the Gnaphosa nigerrima.

“Other than the site in Cheshire the spider is known to be widespread in the cooler parts of Europe and Asia. In north-western and central Europe, it has been recorded from Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland.”