Nursery Web Spider
Pisaura (?)
Nocturnal spider at a lake-side cottage, Lake Baringo, Kenya, October 2016. Body length is about 15 mm.
Nursery web spiders do not use silken webs to catch prey. They hunt usually at night by roaming margins of ponds or slow streams. They can skate over open water and run over floating vegetation. The female, however, uses silk to construct a sort of house for her young as they are hatching from their eggs. Before the eggs hatch they are kept in a silken purse and carried about by the mother secured by her mouth.