Trashline Orbweaver

Description:

Wikipedia lists 180 Species in the Genus Cyclosa, citing the World Spider Catalog as its source. Only 11 of the species listed are documented as being present in the Philippines. All of this was good news until I realized that Wiki did not have a picture of any of the spp. listed for the Philippines. So, I checked as many sources of information as I could and found a few photos of spiders that matched mine, in Inaturalist.org. This would have been just fine if it were not for the fact that there were several different looking spiders, also labelled as Cyclosa insulana. See Notes below.

Habitat:

This Trashline Orbweaver was spotted in our backyard this morning. Its web was moored between two Banana Plants (Musa x paradisiaca L.) known throughout much of the Philippines as Saging, but in the local dialect, where I live, it is called Batag. Plant information - http://www.stuartxchange.org/Saging.html..................

Notes:

When I discovered the wide range of different spiders, all bearing the name Cyclosa insulana, I thought that I had better check on all of my own Project Noah Spottings of Cyclosa spiders and I discovered that I have several Cyclosa spp. (and those seem reasonably safe), but I also have some spottings which I have named "C. insulana" and all of them must now be considered to be suspect. I now have no option, but to go back, urgently, and edit each of them to correct any misleading information. In the course of doing that, I will have to check any comments which might suggest that someone else has perhaps used any wrong information in their own spottings. What a mess. I feel that I might have become a victim of misinformation and, even worse, I might have, unknowingly, passed this on to someone else. I had better get to work on this in the morning.