Happy Mystery Monday! Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is white marbled orbweaver, Araneus marmoreus, pictured in photo below.
Marbled orb weavers get their name from the mottling and spotting patterns found on their bodies. They can be found in residential landscapes, fields, and forests from Spring–late Fall in Maryland. They mostly eat smaller insects, which they capture in their vertically oriented webs. A “signal thread” running through the middle of their webs alerts the spider when prey is caught. Marbled orbweavers spin their web in the morning, and typically spend the day resting in a retreat off to the side of the web.
Mating for the marbled orbweaver takes place in mid–late Summer. Females mate once in their lives, while males may mate several times. Egg sacs, which contain several hundred eggs, are generally deposited in October. The female becomes shriveled late Fall because of lost body mass from laying her eggs.
Marbled orbweavers do not survive the Winter, so adults are not present to provide any sort of care when the spiderlings emerge the following Spring. Their average lifespan is six months.
There are no known adverse effects of marbled orbweavers on humans.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.
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