INVASION ONTOLOGIES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 182

FIGURE 12.1 Page 165 of Edward Snell's journal features sketches of numerous
Australian arthropods, including a formidable centipede, a scorpion and the
'venemous' spider now believed to represent a female Latrodectus hasselti.
Source: Reproduced, with permission, from the Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria.
feared) as venomous' soon after Europeans occupied the Adelaide region in 1836
(Main, 1993: 3). This surmise was itself contestable, but of equal importance, it
reopened a debate sparked by other Australian arachnologists. In 1987, Robert
Raven and Julie Gallon had drawn attention to the absence of redbacks in forested
areas, their ubiquity across urban sites, and the rather late formal description of the
species in 1870, by which time over 200 other Australian spiders had entered the