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Comments & ID Thoughts
I found this spider while working in Pasific Palisades of southern California. Initial guess from a colleague was a California tube trapdoor spider but I'm positive after reviewing videos on YouTube that's not the spider pictured above.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Jul 17, 2019
- Photographed: Jul 3, 2019
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Pasific Palisades, California, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
I think she’s a Hentz Orbweaver, Neoscona crucifera. They don’t always have visible dorsal markings. This is a hairy species often with reddish brown femurs (top segment of a spider leg). They’re harmless. The females build the large webs. They like 90 degree angles and big open spaces for the frames for the orb webs. She was hunting large flying insects.
Yeah your probably right it’s just I see so many orb weavers everyday and handle them frequently. I usually see them up to like .75″ big this one was like 1.5″-2″ and head markings seemed different. Also this one had pretty big fangs they are biting a leaf in the photo but definitely would have tore through my gloves.
Her cephalothorax markings are different, I don’t recognize them. The females display a kind of gigantism. They grow longer and have at least one molt more than the males. The abdomen is stretchy, like a constrictor snake. Big meals and egg development push the abdomen out. After their last batch of eggs is deposited the females’ abdomens shrink and look dry and shriveled.
I have a photo of where I found it and it’s sitting next to its egg sac that was also very large and brown seemingly “hairy”. I can’t figure out how to respond with a comment tho lol.
Please post the photo of her and her egg sac as a new posting. You figured out how to comment 🙂