SINGAPORE - A tiny blob on a plant captured the attention of Singaporean freelance photographer Nicky Bay in January – and mystified him.From a distance, the 2cm-long pouch looked like the usual structure that spiders weave to shield their young from larger predators. But the silken sac resembled candyfloss, the likes of which Mr Bay, an arachnid aficionado, had never seen before.Mr Bay had been out for a night walk in western Singapore with some friends when one of them noticed the spider egg sac and alerted him to it.“Most people will just look at it from afar and dismiss it as just a normal, white egg sac. But us being us, we examine everything,” said Mr Bay, 47. He and his group of friends are part of a growing community of macro photography enthusiasts around the world who capture extreme close-ups of tiny creatures.Unlike the spider egg sacs Mr Bay had come across in his 17 years of macro photography, this one was decked out in dark pink threads. The spider was also nowhere in sight.Determined to uncover the identity of the mystery spider, he uploaded his photographs of the sac to flora and fauna database iNaturalist, run by the US-based non-profit with the same name, where laymen can tap the expertise of scientists and naturalists, as well as artificial intelligence, to identify wildlife.It took the internet just three days to crack the case.Most egg sacs appear to be white, like this egg sac of an eight-spotted crab spider (Platythomisus octomaculatus) in eastern Singapore.PHOTO: NICKY BAYAmong the earliest people to take a stab at the spider’s identity was public relations strategist David Jeffrey Ringer, a New York-based naturalist who sifts through sightings on iNaturalist nearly every day.“I have helped identify photographs of some species that haven’t been positively identified since their original scientific descriptions in the 19th century,” Mr Ringer told The Straits Times. “So there’s a strong thrill of discovery and adventure.”The American likes to browse photos of unclassified orb-weaving spiders – so named for their spiral wheel-shaped webs – from tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Australasia, areas which boast a high diversity of such creatures.Unlike birds and mammals, spiders, especially those in tropical regions, are not as well studied, said Mr Ringer, who also contributes to eBird, a global platform for bird observations.He said: “Only a few scientific laboratories around the world are doing the large-scale studies on hundreds or thousands of museum specimens that are required to reveal the relationships of different families and genera (a category of classification in biology) to each other.”Having previously noticed several egg sacs similar to the one captured by Mr Bay without definitively identifying their makers, Mr Ringer was determined this time to find out which spider was responsible for the structure.A spiny orb weaver (Macracantha hasselti) in western Singapore.PHOTO: NICKY BAYSo the American contacted iNaturalist’s community and support coordinator Tony Iwane, and convinced him to post about the sighting on the non-profit’s social media platforms.Japanese spider researcher Yuya Suzuki noticed the post on X and instantly linked the egg sac to a type of Poltys spider, colloquially known as twig spiders.The curator at the Tokushima Prefectural Museum in Japan had first encountered the spider in a park near his high school in the coastal prefecture of Shizuoka.The egg sac spotted in western Singapore on Jan 4 is believed to belong to a Poltys spider, commonly known as a twig spider.PHOTO: NICKY BAY“Pink-coloured egg sacs are rare,” he told ST. “Most spider egg sacs are white, beige, pale yellow or brown. Some species produce slightly pinkish egg sacs, but spiders like the twig spider, which decorate their egg sacs with bright red or pink silk, are uncommon.” Interestingly, in contrast to the flashy appearance of the twig spider’s egg sac, the nocturnal critter is virtually invisible when motionless, as it resembles a tree knot.An abominable tree-stump spider (Poltys illepidus), a kind of twig spider, frequently seen in Singapore’s nature parks and nature reserves.PHOTO: NICKY BAYIt remains unclear why the egg sac is decorated with conspicuous pink threads, as less ostentatious colours of spider egg sacs are considered important for camouflage, allowing the young to elude predators like birds, said Mr Suzuki, who has documented more than 920 species of spiders in Japan on his website.For iNaturalist’s Mr Iwane, the web of connections spun by the mystery of the egg sac illustrates the global community behind the database.“These kinds of interactions happen thousands of times on iNaturalist every day – they are what power it,” he said.Since iNaturalist’s genesis as a 2008 master’s degree final project at the University of California, Berkeley, more than 250 million observations of plants and animals have been logged on its database.Some of the notable scientific contributions arising from iNaturalist and featured on its website include the first living photograph of a scarab beetle species, the discovery of a lost marine worm, and the high-resolution maps of plant distributions across California.On the egg sac finding, Singaporean veteran spider expert Joseph Koh, who has researched spiders for more than five decades, said he too was amazed by the colouration, which he had never seen before.There are three species of twig spiders here, the most spectacular being the tall-bellied tree-stump spider (Poltys elevatus), which is confined to mature forests like that of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, said Mr Koh, a former diplomat now dubbed Singapore’s Spider-Man due to his passion for the arachnids.A tall-bellied tree-stump spider (Poltys elevatus), a kind of twig spider, in Singapore.PHOTO: NICKY BAYTo help conserve some 800 species of spiders in Singapore, the local authorities need to continue to protect their wild homes and have zero tolerance of the illegal wildlife trade involving forest-dwelling tarantulas, he added.Said Mr Koh: “So long as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is protected, and its ecological integrity is further insulated by surrounding nature parks – the Dairy Farm Nature Park and the Rifle Range Nature Park – (the tall-bellied tree-stump spider) will not be threatened.”For Mr Bay, the egg sac is just one of many insights that macro photography – which has its roots in scientific research of insects during the 20th century – uncovers with its ability to open “a window to an alien world” by magnifying the finer details of small creatures.The software engineer’s interest in shooting rare and uncommon arthropods – invertebrate animals characterised by their hard external skeleton and jointed appendages, including spiders – has taken him as far afield as Africa and South America.After capturing more than 55,800 photos since his foray into macro photography in 2008, when his wife gave him a camera, spiders remain one of his favourite subjects.“Spiders have a lot more variety. Some can look like poop, others have a lot of spikes,” said Mr Bay. “There are enough people chasing after butterflies and dragonflies.”Ang Qing is a correspondent covering local and international breaking news at The Straits Times, with a focus on the environment, crime, technology and social issues.More on this TopicJoin ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.Thanks for sharing!