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Comments & ID Thoughts
this is the "drab gray" I THINK the mate to the one that looks like it has a partial hard crab-like shell. (better picture of that one to follow.)
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Dec 18, 2024
- Photographed: Sep 21, 2022
- Spider: Neoscona (Spotted Orb-weavers)
- Sex:
- Location: Breaux Bridge , Louisiana, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
Help identify this spider
Dec 7, 2024
May 28, 2018
Deer River, 
I think it is a spotted orb weaver…Neoscona crucifera…they are at the end of their lives at this time of year. Females have laid their eggs so they aren’t as plump as they were earlier in the summer.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254995645
https://bugguide.net/adv_search/bgsearch.php?taxon=1991&location%5B%5D=LA I’m not sure which Louisiana Neoscona species she is. Volunteers at Bugguide have helped me with learning to ID them. I think this is An Arabesque Orbweaver. The dorsal muscle attachment indentations are more slanted and darker in this species. There’s also the dark lateral markings. Her legs are darker distally than N. crucifera. That still leaves N. domicilorium. For now I’ll file her as Neoscona.
Hi TangledWeb. It’s hard to tell them apart without knowing the size of the spider… I went for Neoscona crucifera because of the legs…Ages ago a contributor to bugguide identified N. crucifera based in the highly banded back legs compared to no bands on the front legs…they didn’t cite a source so I have no way of knowing how reliable that tip was..
This one below from bugguide was identified as crucifera in spite of its slanted slashes…but the front of the spider was visible…I am not certain which one This spider is either
https://bugguide.net/node/view/1765070/bgimage
one question I can answer. the one that was more gray in color & less “fancy” was about an inch in length, just including the body, not the legs. it grabbed my attention because it was a little bigger than the majority of the spiders I see in my yard. the other pic I submitted, taken the same night, close to where the other was hanging out, was perhaps a little bigger but this may have been an illusion due to how her body seemed a bit elongated in the pic. hope this info if helpful to u.
I am convinced so that it is Neoscona crucifera…it is the biggest of the species in the US….N. arabesca is only around a quarter of an inch. N domiciliorum is around 0.7 of an inch. But I don’t think this spider is colorful enough to be N. domiciliorum.