
Comments & ID Thoughts
Orbweaver
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Oct 17, 2019
- Photographed: Oct 17, 2019
- Spider: Gea heptagon (Heptagonal Orb-weaver)
- Location: Chanute, Kansas, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Ground layer (leaf litter, dirt, grass, etc)
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes: Dorsal
Built a web between blades of grass. For the size of the spider, it was a really small web.
Was it an orb web?
Yeah. That’s how I knew it must be an orbweaver of some sort.
I’m learning that orb weaver taxonomy is more complicated than I thought., There are spiders in a few families that make orb webs. Yours is unusual, it has a cephalothorax like some Aranidae, but the abdomen looks like Theridiidae. The families that have species that make orb webs are: Aranidae, Tetragnathidae, Uloboridae, and Arkyidae. I’ve never heard of the last one, it was broken off from Aranidae. Some of them do what you described, they have a tiny orb web within a bigger supporting web. Tetragnathidae do that. I’ll add one of my photos of a Long-jawed orbweaver with a… Read more »
Maybe an immature Acanthepeira stellata?
I looked into the art aspect of your ideas for the site. Itsy Bitsy said the site used to have art. Pinterest has lots of spider art. My network programmer relative discussed the flexibility of a site like this with me. He said we can’t change the format without access to the hosting server and if we can’t maintain contact with the Site Administrator, nothing significant can change without transferring the site piece by piece to a new host..That’s not a thing we would want to do. The best opportunity for expansion would be to create an entirely new website… Read more »
I don’t think they have filing access, though I requested it some time ago. You’ve probably just noticed me filing things without leaving comments. The last version of this site was in a forum format and there were sections where people shared memes and drawings, it was called SpidersUS. No one expected anything to be filed. I don’t get involved with technical aspects of the site, I just enjoy IDing spiders.
Thanks for answering. It has only been two years since the site changed over to Spider ID (with about 40 species!). You have done a great job building up the site in such a short time period! Especially considering that it wasn’t expected or programmed to be what it has become! I’ll chill out if you want to keep it the same and the site administration is still involved and has our content protected. Thank you for your hard work!
Gea heptagon.
Check out these pics of Austracantha minax for our gallery! The brown egg sac is included in this photo, we also have dorsal and ventral new photos. https://spiderid.com/picture/98985/