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.
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!