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Comments & ID Thoughts
Found dangling from a single strand under a ladder rung. No spiders seen relatively close by. Photographed indoors (found outdoors) in Munford, AL. Leaf was not attached to any plant, was dry/dead leaf, and was completely sealed on all sides (I broke the seal to look inside).
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Sep 14, 2021
- Photographed: Sep 14, 2021
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Munford, Alabama, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
Don’t want to spam a bunch of photos of just an egg sac, so I uploaded the rest to imgur: https://imgur.com/a/XiZajlk
That worked great as a way to add photos! It looks like an Orbweaver’s egg sack. The silk is yellowish, so it might be Trichonephila clavipes or Argiope aurantia, which are both golden silk orbweavers. The sealed leaf is an interesting way to protect an egg sack. I always expect spider egg sacks to be attached to a solid object. I didn’t know that one would use a loose object. Maybe it wasn’t loose at the time. I’m careful when I send out yard debris for municipal composting to try to avoid including my spiders.
I’m not too familiar with the Trichonephila clavipes. As far as Argiope aurantia, the egg sac seems to be way too small. I did have one of those near there a few years back but the egg sac was exposed, much larger, and unfortunately not viable.
As far as the yellowing, that my be a byproduct of my phone’s camera. To me, it seems to be very white. I took the photos inside with artificial light after sunset.
Here is a screen cap of a video I took outdoors during daylight hours: https://imgur.com/a/3gu2ukG
The leaf either was dragged there from far away, fell in the web that no longer exists, or was found very near to the location (on a rung of ladder for who knows how long). It is from a tree (oak?) and the nearest tree is maybe 25 feet or more. Trying to find any kind of information on spiders that use leaves like this but have found nothing. Not sure if this is just an undocumented thing, or if I am barking up the wrong tree assuming this is a spider egg sac. The closest thing I found was… Read more »