INVASION ONTOLOGIES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 183

taxonomic literature. In adding that redbacks were first recorded at port cities - in
a century thick-woven by its energetic maritime culture - Raven and Gallon
ventured the mildly treasonous claim that 'Redback Spiders may not be native to
Australia' (Raven and Gallon, 1987: 307).
This conjecture is the central problematic I wish to explore. But I am not
seeking to determine the 'truth' of Raven's gambit; in fact, the question of the red-
back's indigenity is still, apparently, open. Likewise, my intention is not to narrate
the competing claims that, since 1987, have characterised the debates between
arachnologists, toxinologists, geneticists and ecologists over the origins and
biological synonymy of Latrodectus hasselti (see, for instance, Low, 2001: 144-146;
Griffiths et al ., 2005: 776-784; Vink et al ., 2008: 589-604). Rather, I want to step
back - not just in time, but from the epistemological processes underpinning how
we 'know' that a species is - or is not - autochthonous. What this chapter seeks to
address is the ways in which we imagine histories for arthropods, conjuring up their
putative existence before or beyond human contact. In short, their historical
ontology. As I hope to make clear, the characteristics of Latrodectus spiders are
particularly valuable for illustrating just how tenuous such ontologies are.
Amusing fictions and discursive invasions
The Europeans who arrived in the antipodean colonies by and large cared little
about spiders. The nineteenth century commenced with Spanish soldier-naturalist
Félix de Azara reporting that, when he induced enormous South American bird
spiders ( Mygale avicularia ) to bite slaves, only a temporary fever ensued. At an 1848
meeting of the Linnean Society in London, British arachnologist John Blackwall
likewise reported his 'Experiments on the Human Species' - himself - declaring
claims that spiders might prove harmful to be mere 'amusing fictions' (Blackwall,
1848: 31-32). His dismissal was pointedly aimed at Latrodectus species and Lycosa
tarantula . The bite of the latter, a wolf spider known in the Italian states as the
'tarantula', was popularly reputed to cause a potentially deadly lethargy cured only
by frenzied dancing. As late as 1889, the influential American journal Insect Life
reported a 'general incredulity among entomologists and arachnologists' that spider
bites could prove fatal, citing many 'naturalists who have allowed themselves to be
bitten without bad result' (Riley and Howard, 1889: 204).
Why, therefore, would a nineteenth-century settler in Van Diemen's Land, or
the Swan River Colony, heed spiders? Moreover, why would any one spider prove
more notable than another, apart from particularly remarkable characteristics such
as size? In fact, prior to the 1860s, settlers' relatively rare references to Australian
arachnids focused on ticks, scorpions or large, hairy 'tarantulas' like the example
sketched by Snell - species now known generically as huntsman spiders ( Sparassidae
species). In 1890, Victorian amateur naturalist Charles Frost noted that:
No small animal has more enemies, or fewer friends than the Voconia, or
so-called 'Tarantula' - or perhaps more commonly 'Triantelope' - though,