Hm. I don’t know. When we first found her (2004), it was a little harder to identify animals like this. I was told by someone local that they were Golden Orb Weavers, and that’s what I’ve believed ever since.
She was something, though, and worth taking pictures of, so you can judge for yourself:
This picture is deceiving; I didn’t want to disturb her by getting too close, and her web was enormous so it was hard to both get my hand behind her in the bush and take the photo; her body was the size of my thumb:
And here’s a side shot, if it helps identification:
I think the identification was partially based on the web pattern – there’s that distinctive radial thick web running along the diameter of her web.
She was with us all summer, and we took pains to avoid damaging her web in the hopes that we’d get some of her babies the next year, but she was the only one we ever saw in 12 years.
Cool, thanks. Although she’s 23 years dead by now, it’s good to have correctly placed her. I’m not a spider guy, as a rule, but aside from Portia (and, really, who doesn’t love Portia) she was my favorite spider. So beautiful, and we used to say she was elegant because it looked like she was wearing black, long-sleeved gloves as if for a dinner party.
Hm. I don’t know. When we first found her (2004), it was a little harder to identify animals like this. I was told by someone local that they were Golden Orb Weavers, and that’s what I’ve believed ever since.
She was something, though, and worth taking pictures of, so you can judge for yourself:
This picture is deceiving; I didn’t want to disturb her by getting too close, and her web was enormous so it was hard to both get my hand behind her in the bush and take the photo; her body was the size of my thumb:
And here’s a side shot, if it helps identification:
I think the identification was partially based on the web pattern – there’s that distinctive radial thick web running along the diameter of her web.
She was with us all summer, and we took pains to avoid damaging her web in the hopes that we’d get some of her babies the next year, but she was the only one we ever saw in 12 years.
Yep, that’s definitely Argiope aurantia. It has quite a lot of common names, including “golden garden spider” … and it is an orb-weaver.
However it is not a “golden orb-weaver” which is the common name for the genera Nephila and Trichonephila.
Yep, they are called “stabilimenta” and we don’t really know what they do. Very common in Argiope spp.
Cool, thanks. Although she’s 23 years dead by now, it’s good to have correctly placed her. I’m not a spider guy, as a rule, but aside from Portia (and, really, who doesn’t love Portia) she was my favorite spider. So beautiful, and we used to say she was elegant because it looked like she was wearing black, long-sleeved gloves as if for a dinner party.
Portia is amazing! I am a spider guy, but I don’t really have a favourite one. There are too many awesome ones.
Also, those are amazing pictures for 2004!
This species is actually the title picture of my US field guide! A very good book!