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| Boo! Autumn is a season for creepy-crawlies, spiders, and bugs. This is a female Argiope aurantia, which is Latin for 'golden silver-face.' This name makes a lot of sense, given that the cephalothorax (meaning head-body) is silver while the abdomen is gold and black. We know it's not a male because males of the species are much smaller, brown, and just plain ugly. |
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| "Oh... what tangled webs we weave...." As members of the Araneidae family, these spides are "orb-weavers" and produce the classic spider-web. |
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| This specimen was photographed on September 28, 2024, next to the long white wooden bridge in the arboretum. |
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| For comparison, this photo is from insectidentification.org (image credit: Arch Baker). |
