Nephila
(Golden Silk Orb-weavers)

Nephila, commonly known as Golden Silk Orb-weavers, is a genus of spiders in the family Araneidae. Nephila spiders have been sighted 29 times by contributing members. Based on collected data, the geographic range for Nephila includes 15 countries and 1 states in the United States. Nephila is most often sighted outdoors, and during the month of March.

Taxonomic Hierarchy

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Suborder: Araneomorphae
Family: Araneidae
Genus: Nephila

Other Common Names

Golden Silk Orb-weavers, Banana Spiders, Golden Orb-weavers, Golden Silk Spiders

Author

William Elford Leach, 1815

Sightings Overview

There have been 29 confirmed sightings of Nephila (Golden Silk Orb-weavers), with the most recent sighting submitted on December 28, 2019 by Spider ID member shay07. The detailed statistics below may not utilize the complete dataset of 29 sightings because of certain Nephila sightings reporting incomplete data.

Web: 86% of the time, Nephila spiders are sighted in a spider web (Sample size: 29)
Sex: 9 female and 0 male.
Environment: Nephila has been sighted 43 times outdoors, and 1 times indoors.
Outdoors: Man-made structure (6). On flower (1). Low foliage (13). High foliage (16). Freshwater river, lake, stream (1). Open field, pasture, grassland (1). Forest (5).

Location and Range

Nephila (Golden Silk Orb-weavers) has been sighted in the following countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, United States, Vietnam.

Nephila has also been sighted in the following states: Georgia.

Seasonality

Nephila has been primarily sighted during the month of March.

January: 5
February: 4
March: 6
April: 3
May: 5
June:
July:
August:
September: 2
October: 2
November:
December: 2

Additional Remarks

The subfamily this genus belongs to, Nephilinae Simon, 1894, was recently restored and transferred back to the family Araneidae from Nephilidae by Dimitrov et al., 2016. The nephilines have also been placed in the family Tetragnathidae in the past.