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.
Orb-Weaver Spider
(Family Araneidae)
Characteristics
The family Araneidae has around 1,500 species distributed around the world. This family has the largest number of species and are known for their weaving of webs. This spider has eight eyes and a large rounded abdomen. Just like any other spiders, their body is made up of 2 body parts, a chelicerae or fangs, and eight legs. The orb weaver spider comes in a variety of colors. Some orb weaver can be black, brown or yellow.
Habitat
This spider can live both indoors and outdoors. This spider can be found on weeds, fences, walls, ceilings, trees, and in any place where they can easily lure insects.
Behavior
Orb weavers create beautiful spider webs that are similar to a bicycle wheel with all of its braces put together. This spider creates organized webs that are circular, which they use to trap their prey.
Those that you see creating webs are mostly females. Other species of the orb weaver family create a new web every day while others just do maintenance work on their web. Once their web is done, they will search for a prey by leaving their web. However, they usually don’t go far away from their web in case that there’s a trapped insect on their web.
This spider does not have a good eye sight and they mostly rely on vibration to know if their prey has already been trapped in their web or if a prey is approaching.
Food
Like most spiders, the orb weaver prefers to eat a variety of insects. They can eat flies, mosquitoes, ants, moths, and so on. They can even eat other spiders or insects that are larger than them.
Life Cycle
When the female and the male orb weaver mate, the male will stay in a corner of the female’s web. He needs to be careful so that he will not end as a meal for her. The female will stay in the middle of the web to wait for a meal. After the female catches her food, the male will take advantage of the situation and will mate. He can also wait for the female to molt so that he can mate.
Most orb weavers are unfortunate to only have a year to live. Once they hatch from their eggs, they will molt several times and will become adults. The young spiders look like adults once they emerge from their egg sac and will usually hatch during the spring. The spiderlings will stay inside their egg case even after they hatched. They will be confined in one room until their first molt, which is for five to six days. On their second molt, which is after 24 to 30 days, the spiderlings will disperse and will weave their own orbs.
Other Information and Tips
The family Araneidae is not dangerous at all. While most are scared of them, this spider is not venomous nor dangerous. Their venom is only toxic to their prey, but not on people. Some individuals who gets bitten by this spider may have an allergic reaction, especially for sensitive individuals.
Photo: Orb Weaver Spider by Tony Alter, used under CC BY 2.0 / resized from original