Subject: wondering what spider this is
Location: Sacramento California
October 25, 2015 9:53 am
Found this little guy from outside and i havent ever seen one for my 20 years of life. So im just wondering what it is. Thank you!
Signature: katie
Dear Katie,
Were it not for the orb web, we might have thought this was a Crab Spider because of the long front legs, but Crab Spiders do not spin webs and the web is definitely an orb web, indicating this is a Orbweaver in the family Araneidae. The bumps on the abdomen remind us of the Cat-Face Spider, Araneus gemmoides, and we suspect this is a male of the species. As you can see by this pair pictured on BugGuide, the male is the smaller of the sexes. According to the Cirrus Images site: “The males are generally much smaller than the females and commonly lack the showy coloring of their fairer sex. They often spin their own smaller orb web near an outlying portion of the female’s, and I’ve noticed most males give the females wide berth. Indeed, I rarely see male orb weavers, they are so reclusive.”
