If you were out and about in Wagga over the weekend, you probably noticed long strands of silk floating through the air.
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The strands clung to light posts and telephone wires across the city and a closer inspection would have revealed that each one was carrying a tiny, baby spider.
Dr Helen Smith, the Australian Museum's technical officer in Arachnology, said the spiders were "ballooning" - a process in which they use their webs to fly through the air and find a new home.
"The small spiders are letting off a long trail of silk thread and using that to actually get picked up in the air column and fly through the air," she said.
"When the baby spiders hatch they hang around their egg sac but if they stay too long they start eating each other so they need to use ballooning to disperse and find their own area."
Dr Smith said ballooning happens throughout the year, but is particularly common in late Autumn when many spiders are hatching.
Charles Sturt University entomologist Dr Paul Weston said the weekend ballooning event in Wagga was probably particularly notable due to the Riverina's wet summer.
"Because of the favourable conditions and the amount of rain there has been an absolute abundance of flies in Wagga," Dr Weston said.
"That meant there were a lot of flies and other insects for spiders to feed on which then resulted in an abundance of spiders as well."
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Dr Weston said the significant number of ballooning spiders was "one of those unique sets of combinations" that nature can conjure up.
The weekend event brought back memories of 2012, when thousands of spiders canvassed the Wagga countryside in their webs as they fled the flood-soaked ground.
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