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Comments & ID Thoughts
This appears to be a Mabel Orchard orb weaver, Leucauge mabelae, according to your site's other photos. It's my first sighting in our year-old yard. It had built a multi-layer web about a foot in height of relatively straight crisscrossing, and it was perched on a typical round web placed above all the others. The top web was about two feet off the ground, running between the stucco wall of the house and the top edge of a homemade chicken-wire compost bin. It's a relatively damp area thanks to combined runoff from both ours and a neighbors' roofs. It's quite beautiful, and as it became accustomed to me, was happy to work its web, turning its beautiful body about, and seemingly glowing in the pale evening sun as several areas seemed to emit their own light. I'm feeling blessed by the cosmos.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Apr 5, 2019
- Photographed: Apr 4, 2019
- Spider: Leucauge argyrobapta (Mabel Orchard Orb-weaver)
- Location: Corpus Christi, Texas, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.)
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes: Lateral
Sep 19, 2024
Sep 19, 2024
Brooksville, 
At this location it appears L. mariana may be a possibility. The slight differences seen here (ref: L. mariana, Eberhard wiki examples) are a medial line visible from the point of the ventral V toward the prosoma. Also the V is positioned slightly closer to the spinnerets. The lateral folium collapses into oblique stripes toward the spinnerets. Taken together these point toward mariana but the species will need to have expanded it’s range for this to be true. For reference, contrasting this ventral appearance with L. argyrobapta occurring in Florida should Illustrate the differences. Florida (south of Tallahassee) is exclusively… Read more »
Oooh interesting. I hadn’t heard of L mariana previously. I think you are right. Inaturalist has sightings of them on the southern Texas coast. Corpus Christi isn’t that far up from those sightings.