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In my back yard, an Araneus diadematus (AKA European garden spider, diadem spider, cross spider, or crowned orb weaver). I think. They vary pretty amazingly in markings and colors, as you can see on the spiderid.com page for the species, so I'm not 100% certain in my identification. I also can't determine whether it's a male or an immature, non-gravid female. I took these photos with my Mom's old Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. | |
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Here the spider has moved down a little from the stabilimentum that it was previously partially obscured behind. | |
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Angled view. | |
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Flash photo which washes out the spider, but lets you see the web better. It's interesting how the spider has currently left a big gap between the outer orb-weaving and the orb-weaving at the center of the web. | |
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This spider sheltering under the fence-top nearby, seemingly guarding an egg sac, has quite similar coloration to the previous Araneus diadematus, but it's tiny in comparison. In many spider species, the male is way smaller than the female, so the other one may be a female with this spider being its mate. That would also explain why the egg sac is so much bigger than it is. It's interesting, though — in other species, the males often have very thin abdomens, whereas this spider has proportions consistent with most gravid female spiders. Perhaps that's just a quirk of this species, or perhaps it's actually a female of a different Araneus species. | |
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A female Argiope argentata (AKA silver argiope) in my front yard, ventral (underside) view. These photos were taken hurriedly with my iPod Touch just before rushing off to a movie, but came out pretty good. | |
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Yeah, girl, you catch those flies and mosquitos! Thumbs up! Heh, of course my thumb is actually in the picture as a scale reference. In my haste, I didn't get my thumb all the way to the web, so the spider is actually even bigger than the reference would imply. | |
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Invasion of the Giant Argiopes. Coming soon to a theater near you. Gotta love the crazy "horns" these ladies have on the back of their abdomens. Also, it's interesting — given these spiders' coloration, I'd never really understood where the "argentata" / "silver" appelation came from, but in this particular dorsal-view (top side) shot, the spider's body looks super-silvery! Hmmm. | |
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A female Argiope argentata in my back yard this time, ventral view again. The camera is my Mom's Canon. I wonder if the appearance of two eyes looking at you from the underside of the spider's head is just a coincidence of anatomy, or if that helps deter predators because they think they're being watched by this scary-looking "face". | |
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I couldn't get my Mom's camera to focus on the spider properly in its automatic macro focus modes, so I had to go with manual focus. Actually, its "manual" focus mode is actually semi-automatic, and it just takes the focal distance you set as a "hint", and keeps adjusting it somewhat on each shot whether you like it or not. This, combined with the fact that I wasn't using a tripod or monopod, plus the fact that the wind was gusting quite hard, making the web undulate (seemingly causing the spider to not pull its legs into as tight an X-shaped position as usual, for stability), made it quite difficult to get perfect focus. However, in this shot I managed to get the web in perfect focus. Argiopes' neatly constructed zigzag stabilimenta are quite curious. | |
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Rear dorsal view. | |
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Dorsal view taken blindly from underneath, against the cloudy, sprinkling sky. | |
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And again, but with flash this time. Oops, didn't mean to take a spider selfie!
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The flash washes the spider out pretty badly, but there are a few small details that can't be seen without it. Also kinda interesting how to the upper-left of the spider, only the web intersection points show up clearly. | |
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Side ventral view. | |
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In the previous photo and this one, you can see that another difficulty was the
quite shallow focus I was working with. In the previous shot, the spider's
closer legs are more in focus, and the little hairs on them can be seen, whereas
in this one, the farther legs are more in focus, and show the hairs. Reminds me
of the funny anecdote from the Tron commentary track where in one
scene, the cinematographer has to ask the director if he wants the character's
left eye or right eye in focus.
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Another ventral view, from a higher angle so as to see the horns on the back of the abdomen better. | |
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Tonight there was a female Argiope argentata at head level at the close edge of our guava tree for the first time, allowing me to get some closer looks than I ever had before, and these dorsal shots. Unfortunately the only photo of the ones I took with my Mom's Canon PowerShot that wasn't blurry due to the slow shutter speed (I guess I should really pull out my tripod next time I do night shots) was this flash one, in which much of the spider is washed out past the point of being able to fix it in a photo editor. However, there's some detail in this photo that you can't see in the lower-resolution iPod Touch shot. | |
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Okay, now I definitely understand why they call this spider the Argiope argentata / silver argiope. In this shot taken with my iPod Touch, you can really see the silver coloration on this particularly silvery specimen's dorsal side. The "white" parts are actually those silver parts that are reflecting the light from my flashlight most directly. | |
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Same spider, same web, same Canon, the next day. The web showed up nicely against the leaves in this shot. | |
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I finally discovered that my Mom's camera has a setting to adjust the flash intensity, and in this shot and some of the following ones, I took advantage of that to get the benefits of a flash without washing anything out. I felt this shot gave a good impression of the spider's silveriness (which is referred to in both the genus name Argiope and the species name argentata), so I decided to contribute it to Wikimedia Commons and add it to the Argiope (spider) Wikipedia page. | |
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A dewdrop spider (genus Argyrodes), in the same web. This is a kleptoparasitic or commensal spider that lives in the web of a host like the Argiope argentata and feeds on its prey. I actually noticed this little spider in the web the previous night as well, but I could tell I wouldn't be able to get a decent shot of it at night where it was positioned. It was difficult enough getting it in focus during the day, especially since it was very gusty! I felt this shot gave a good impression of the silver coloration on the abdomen that the species shares with the silver argiope (initially causing me to mistake it for the female's mate), so I decided to contribute a cropped version to Wikimedia Commons, which I added to the Argyrodes Wikipedia page (which previously only had one photo). | |
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It took a ton of tries and a lot of patience (and some yoga-like muscle use) to get a halfway decent shot that included both the Argiope and the Argyrodes, where you can clearly see the full bodies of both, both are in focus, the Argyrodes looks like a spider rather than a piece of debris (at rest, they usually either tuck in all their legs, or stretch out half of them straight forward and the rest straight back, giving them a very inconspicuous and unspiderlike profile), and the plane the two spiders are in is perpendicular to the camera direction so that there's no distortion of their relative sizes. After going to all that trouble, I decided it'd be good to contribute a cropped version of this photo to Wikimedia Commons and add it to the Argiope argentata and Argyrodes Wikipedia pages, which did not have an illustration of the dewdrop spider sharing a web with its host. | |
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Another close-up of the female. Got a good angle on this one to be able to see the spider's eyes (check 'em out in the full-size view of this photo) and chelicerae. However, the angle and light reflection makes the silver parts look more white than silver. | |
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This shot is a decent compromise between the previous shot of the female and the first one from today. | |
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"Yeah, great photo session, baby! Gimme 1!" | |
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