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.
Black and Yellow Garden Spider
(Argiope aurantia)
Characteristics
The black and yellow garden spider is commonly found near homes and gardens, hence the word ‘garden’ was tagged with its name. The species Argiope aurantia is one of the most attractive spiders and is also known as an orb weaving spider, which means it spins in a circle to create its web.
Identification:
• Brightly colored spider
• Female spider are 1 ½ inch long
• Males are ¾ inch long
• They have a cephalothorax, which is a small front body section that contains silver hair on it.
• The large back section or the abdomen has an egg-shaped with a black and yellow coloring
Habitat
These astonishing webs are usually found attached to branches, flowers, bushes and tall grass where they can easily be seen and observed by other insects. They can stay in a particular area without the need to transfer to other locations throughout the season. Their web can create a vibration when disturbed, which would alarm them for upcoming predators. Also, if the motion comes from a prey, the vibration will cause the prey to get more ensnared.
Behavior
A usual characteristic of the black and yellow garden spider is their ability to hang upside down from the center of their web as they wait for their prey to come near.These spiders can create a spiral thread of adhesive silk, which they can eat each day to construct a new one the next day, commonly in the same place. The female and the male spiders are often found in two separate webs, with the female creating a larger web, while the male builds the smaller web on the outer part of her web.
Food
A variety of prey can fall victim to the black and yellow garden spiders, which includes prey larger than themselves.
Some of the most common preys are:
• Grasshoppers
• Katydids
• Cicadas
• June beetles
• Moths
• Bees
• Wasps
• Aphids
• Flies
• Ants
Life Cycle
Once the male spider reaches its maturity, he will search for a female to mate, which is why they can be found near a female’s web. After they mate, the female spider will lay eggs on one side of her web and cover it with a papery sac. There can be over a thousand eggs inside a sac that are commonly produced in the late summer or early fall. The mother usually dies after laying her eggs.
After these eggs hatch in the fall, they will still stay inside their sac through winter. Once spring comes, these spiderlings will leave their sac and go off in different directions. While there may be thousands of them produced, it is common to only have a few survivors because of predators, such as birds, wasps, shrews, lizards and parasites that affect their population.
Other Information and Tips
While there may be some spiders that are found dangerous, the black and yellow garden spiders do not pose a threat to people. Their bites will just commonly leave their victims with a sore, itchy swelling that will fade away after a couple of days.
Photo: ReformedArsenal at English Wikipedia [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons / resized from original
