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Nephila clavipes
The Golden Silk Orb-Weaver is a spinner which weave impressive webs. They also called the wood spiders or banana spiders. These spices have a leg span of 15 cm and is the largest known fossilized spider. They have striped legs specialized for weaving and vary from reddish to greenish yellow in color with distinctive whiteness on the cephalothorax and the beginning of the abdomen. Their contrast of dark brown/black and green/yellow allows warning and repelling of potential predators to whom their venom might be of little danger.
They weave their webs in bushes and near flowers. The Golden Orb Weavers are known to occasionally eat prey as big as small birds and even snakes.
Nephila spiders are the oldest surviving genus of spiders. The name refers to the color of the spider silk, not the color of the spider itself. The webs of most Nephila spiders are complex, with a fine-meshed orb suspended in a maze of non-sticky barrier webs. As with many weavers of sticky spirals, the orb is renewed regularly if not daily, apparently because the stickiness of the orb declines with age.
Spotted on Nov 26, 2011
Submitted on May 26, 2012
