Have LOTs of these in the garden... they make these huge, beautiful webs in very little time... unfortunately right across paths sometimes, so I am constantly walking through them, and ending up with these large spiders on my face/hair etc... so far only a few bites (OUCH!).
Just browsing the Web for spiders, the markings on your lovely seem closest to some species of Neoscona. Google-ing "Neoscona" shows subtle differences in markings and colorations of members of the same species. To me, yours looks closest to N. adianta http://www.vestrehus.dk/bpix/sommer%2005/neoscona.jpg or perhaps maybe N. oaxacensis http://mamba.bio.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/spiders/Neoscona%20oaxacensis.htm
I'm definitely no expert. Just wanted to take a stab at this one. :-)
Hmm... just found a pic of N. arabesca whose pattern matches yours more closely... http://bugguide.net/node/view/27389
This message was edited Aug 3, 2006 9:26 PM
That's what I finally decided it was, too, N arabesca. Added it to the bug files as that, and haven't heard I made a mistake yet...
RU sure? It's possible that they are not at the same stage of development, but.. The cephalothorax is different, and the body markings are just a little off. I think it's really close, though.
What does the web look like?
Of course I'm not sure... it's a spider- small, creepy, and I am not going to catch it to look at mouth parts or whatever it takes to positively ID them. But after looking at a LOT of Orb Weaver photos, this easily comes the closest, and it's found in this area... so I'm going with it. The web is circular. ... and a bit on the wimpy side (some flying insects fly right through it, leaving a little hole where they went through)... guess they snack on really wimpy insects. They range in size from about 5-7mm up to maybe 1.5cm in body length.
