Scientists have said they are “completely stunned” after discovering a new species of spider.
A team from Jersey’s Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust was working with partners on the Mauritian island of Ilot Vacoas when the arachnid was spotted along a stretch of rock along the coast in 2023.
The charity said the discovery was confirmed as a new species of trapdoor spider which was named the Mauritian tidal trapdoor spider (Idioctis marevallum).
Dr Max Tercel, the entomologist who found the spider, said it felt like uncovering a “hidden treasure”.
Recalling the discovery, Tercel said he found the spider on “a stretch of coastal rock with sparse vegetation”.
It was “not somewhere we expected to find something so remarkable”, he said.
“It was dark by then and I was carefully searching through crevices with my head torch when, to my astonishment, I noticed a familiar pattern – a spider’s legs extending from its burrow, something I’d only ever seen before in lush forests and grasslands,” he said.
“I was completely stunned.”