The black and yellow argiope is another orb weaver, and might possibly be confused with the golden silk orb weaver, but actually are quite different. Every night the female black and yellow argiope will eat her web and build a new one in the morning. Both genders are black with yellow and/or red stripes on it's back. The male will wander around looking for a mate in the early fall. The male will build a smaller web near the female's and will try to seduce the female by plucking the silk strands on her web. He then travels up her web, a safety line ready, in case the female tries to attack. The female will lay her egg sac in the fall and will usually die at the first frost. The babies will hatch from their eggs in the fall, maybe a few weeks after being lain. They will stay in the egg sac until spring, when they come out and travel by ballooning* to a different area. Females are significantly larger than the males, as with most spiders, males can be (excluding the legs) up to 1/3 of an inch long, and females can reach up to (also excluding the legs) 1.1 inches long. They will eat most any insect or bug that is smaller than them, although they have many predators too, such as the Carolina Chickadee (will try to do a post in the summer), the Striped skunk, the common yellowthroat, many other birds, some types of ducks, and a few large insects. Want to see some more of these big boys? Neat pictures can be found at this website. And, according to the people at carolinanature.com, argiope is pronounced ar-GUY-oh-pee. Who knew? Definitely not me. Wanna check out some more photos? More are located right here! Click it! You know you wanna... Just one more tidbit of information: this spider, like most orb weavers, is harmless to humans. Well, stay tuned, because next week is going to have EVEN MORE ORB WEAVERS!!! Yippee!
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*Ballooning is when a spiderling will use a strand of silk to float in the air and carry it farther than they're able to walk.
And for some reason Blogger thinks it's Monday, not Wednesday. Well happy February, everybody! :-)
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