Though young, 20-year-old Thomas Cassar is already making waves in the scientific community…

Just last month, Thomas discovered not one, but two new species of spiders right here in Malta!

The young biologist took to social media to recall the gruelling process of discovering the new species – Nemesia cominensis and Nemesia maltensis.

“The story of this paper begins on a sweltering September day, two years ago, on the island of Comino. While the coastline of this tiny island was brimming with scantily clad people trying to cool off, I was in the middle of nowhere fully kitted out for a day of fieldwork. Roaming around the central part of the island, I stumbled across a shallow valley, and here I set down my tools to start digging. You see, I was in search of spiders - the kind that live their entire lives concealed in underground burrows,” he wrote.

“So I struck the soil a few times, not really expecting to find anything, and - lo and behold - an enormous spider, beautifully patterned, golden brown with dark chevrons. I'd never seen anything like it! Excited, I wrote back to my friend Arthur Decae - a world expert on this group of spiders - and he let me know in no uncertain terms that what I had here may very well be an undescribed species! But it was a female, and it's not considered good practice to describe a species without having seen both sexes. The snag? Male trapdoor spiders only come out to play for a few weeks in the year, making my chances of finding one exceedingly small,” Thomas continued.

Just a few days after this, he set up a trap around Buskett and, to an even bigger surprise, he unearthed another mysterious spider!

Thomas quickly contacted spider experts from the scientific community and it wasn’t long before he realised that he was on his way to discovering two completely new species.

“The next year and a half would be ones of gruelling and persistent fieldwork. Every hour I could spare was spent digging relentlessly, come rain or shine, hacking away at compacted soil and sifting through mountains of dirt to find my precious spiders. Eventually, I did find the females for the Buskett species (now named Nemesia maltensis) and I managed to observe them making their burrows in the lab,” Thomas added.

“Surprisingly, Nemesia maltensis is the only species of its kind to build a burrow without a trapdoor - a world first for this genus! The males for the Comino species, now named Nemesia cominensis, still elude me despite the many blisters I bore trying to find them. One day, perhaps,” he continued.

Thomas published a full paper about his research in The European Journal of Taxonomy, which can be accessed here.

What an incredible achievement!

Main Images: Facebook/Thomas Cassar