Saturday, March 5, 2011

Spidey

Can anyone identify this fella for me?



The spider databases at Museum Victoria and CSIRO are being less helpful than usual with this one. We're stumped, and would appreciate any thoughts...

The spider is:

- about 2 - 2.5cm in diameter
- is living on a web ([presumbly that it built)
- is not sharing the web with any spider friends as far as we can tell
- appears to be smooth-bodied, not hairy-bodied
- is catching a megatonne of mosquitos in its perch near my front door

UPDATED: It appears to be a female juvenile golden orb spider.

3 comments:

  1. Hi,

    It looks like a golden orb weaver.
    http://www.mdavid.com.au/spiders/goldenorb.shtml
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/australian/nephila/Nephila.html
    http://emilysblog3s.edublogs.org/2011/02/15/backyard-spiders/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Joy! From reading the links, we think she's a juvenile golden orb female. Happily this probably means a month or so more of her insect-trapping prowess, which is significantly reducing my mosquito load around the front door.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We've had two of them in our backyard too.

    ReplyDelete