Yellow Garden Spider

Welcome to this week’s Wildlife of the Week!

Our species this week is the Yellow Garden Spider

Argiope aurantia

All of you spider haters out there should just scroll on past this week’s Wildlife of the Week, the Yellow Garden Spider! These brightly colored spiders are common and widely distributed throughout the United States. They are members of the orb weaver family, with more than 2800 species of orb weavers worldwide. The garden spider is one of the most attractive spiders and is common on the refuge.

They are conspicuous by their size, vivid coloration and by their large and uniquely constructed webs. They have striking yellow, black and white markings and they are big, the female garden spider's abdomen can be more than an inch long. Her legs extend twice that distance and are black with red or yellow bands. Male spiders are much smaller, less than an inch long.

The construction of their web is an engineering feat, begun when the spider floats a line on the wind to another surface. From this initial web line, the spider drops another line from the center, making a "Y". The rest of the scaffolding follows with many radii of nonsticky silk. A final spiral of sticky capture silk is then wound around the support silk. The result is an attractive largely symmetrical web.

One unique web feature is a crisscross band of silk through the center of the web. As orb weavers age, they tend to produce less silk; many adult orb weavers can then depend on their coloration to attract more of their prey. The band may be a lure for prey, a marker to warn birds away from the web or camouflage for the spider when it sits in the web. This web provides both a home and a source of food for the orb weaver. Any prey insect that blunders into the sticky lines is stunned by a quick bite, and then wrapped in silk. The web is replaced regularly, often every day. Garden spiders tend to be active during the evening hours; they hide for most of the day. Towards evening, the spider consumes the old web, rests for about an hour, then spins a new web in the same general location.
Spiders mate at the central hub of the web, where the male slowly traverses the web, trying not to get eaten, and when reaching the hub, mounts the female; or the male constructs a mating thread to attract the female via vibratory courtship, and if successful, mating occurs on the thread. Eggs laid in the autumn hatch the following spring, and the newly emerged spiderlings spin an irregular mass of silk in which they cluster in a ball for several days.
Garden spiders are usually reluctant to bite. Symptoms of a garden spider bite are mild local pain, numbness and swelling.

(Photo by Tom Ress)