Know Your Enemy
Accurate identification of pests is as important as choosing the best preventive pest management available on the market today. Preventive Pest Control has compiled a list of most common pests to help you identify the problem.
Banded Garden Spider
(Argiope trifasciata)
Characteristics
Banded garden spiders are well-known in the western parts of the United States. They are even made popular by the concentric and very well patterned webs they create.
• The largest of the orb-weaving spiders.
• Female spiders range from 2/5 to 1 inch in length, excluding the legs.
• Male spiders range from 4/25 to 1/4 inch in length, excluding the legs.
• Female spider is found having white, black, orange, brown, tan and yellow color.
• Male spider have white, orange, brown, tan and yellow color.
• They have eight eyes with the median eyes grouped together in a trapezoid shape. The lateral eyes are positioned with some intervals.
• The female’s abdomen is oval with mostly white or yellow and has a thin black cross line.
• The male’s abdomen is also oval with white or silver and shinning gold highlights.
• Both genders carapace are silver or white.
Habitat
The banded garden spider can be seen dwelling in open fields, tall grass, and shrubby vegetation. Unlike the black and yellow garden spider, the banded garden spider prefers a more hidden and drier habitat.
Behavior
Known as an orbweaver, this spider can create large concentric ring pattern webs in places where they cannot be seen easily. These webs are built among the tangled grass, weeds and other vegetation and is placed close to the ground. Their web is made of strong and sticky, threadlike filaments that are decorated with a loose, zigzag band of silk called a stabilimentum. This spider is active during the day, and can be spotted waiting for active insects such as wasps and grasshoppers to come as it stays put on its web.
Food
Since their web is strong and sticky, large insects become an easy prey. Flying insects are no match for these spiders since they can quickly paralyzed these insects once they bite them. Once they are done feeding, they will discard the dead insect and wait for the next prey.
Life Cycle
These spiders only have a one-year life cycle where their offspring is protected within an egg sac. Their life cycle starts when the male spider wanders to find a female spider in late July. The female will still remain on the web during mating. The mating happens during the second-half of the summer and the females produce the egg sacs.
As the winter comes, the species will overwinter as eggs inside the sacs, which could accommodate up to 1000 eggs per sac, or they can be tiny spiderlings that will be hidden in the foliage. As the temperature drops, the young spiders will start to set out by “ballooning”. They will deploy threads of silk that will be caught by the breeze, similar to the ending of the movie in Charlotte’s Web where the baby spiders move away.
Other Information and Tips
Just like their cousin the Argiope spider, the banded garden spider is not dangerous. Their bite would just bring discomfort, but are not painful and can even be compared to a wasp or bee sting.
Photo: Aranya - Araña - Spider - Argiope trifasciata by Ferran Pestaña, used under CC BY 2.0 / resized from original