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Comments & ID Thoughts
These are Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis), but I’m really confused as to why I found two females fighting on one web. Anyone who knows more about arachnids than me care to explain?
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Sep 17, 2020
- Photographed: Aug 27, 2020
- Spider: Micrathena gracilis (Spined Micrathena)
- Sex:
- Location: Louisa, Virginia, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Low foliage (shrubs, herbs, garden, excluding flowers),Forest
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes: Lateral, Webs
Aug 31, 2024
Aug 31, 2024
Farmville, 
@ItsyBitsy Great photo! It might be a good candidate for our photo gallery.I think this is a female and fairly large male mating. I’ve seen another species mate dangling from a silk strand like this. Male spiders use appendages near their heads, the pedipalps, for mating. The palps have suction cup bulbs at the ends that they use to pick up and carry semen they deposit on a web. That’s a way to identify a spider as a male – he has swollen bulbs on his pedipalps. It is thought to be possibly attractive to females. The opening, epigyne, in… Read more »
Here’s a male: https://bugguide.net/node/view/972862
I agree it looks like two females, the males of this species are different looking, proportionally longer, and not so spiny. I have no way of knowing what really led up to this but would speculate that they built their webs too close together, or one got displaced and ended up in a bad place.
Thanks! That was my second guess, a female battle, pretty cool!