Sometimes nature comes to you
August 23rd, 2015
I haven't been getting out on nature walks much lately (waiting for a plantar fasciitis to heal up), but sometimes nature comes to you! I was out taming my overgrown meadow of a back lawn a few weeks ago, when I found this beauty.
Argiope aurantia, known by many names including golden garden spider (the etymology of her Latin name is "gilded silver-face.") She was well over an inch long. I rushed inside to get the camera, and my first picture when I got back was of her busily wrapping up her latest prey.
She finished with that quickly and then headed back to the center of her web.
1680x1050 wallpaper
The dense, zigzag vertical structure is called a "stabilimentum", and is characteristic of the webs of these kinds of spiders. Scientists don't know for sure why they do it. (The original theory, now discarded, is that it helped stabilize the web somehow.) According to one of my Facebook commenters, it has been discovered that the stabilimentum reflects ultraviolet light. Some flowers use ultraviolet patterns to attract pollinating insects, so the purpose may be to attract prey in that fashion.
August 23rd, 2015
I haven't been getting out on nature walks much lately (waiting for a plantar fasciitis to heal up), but sometimes nature comes to you! I was out taming my overgrown meadow of a back lawn a few weeks ago, when I found this beauty.
Argiope aurantia, known by many names including golden garden spider (the etymology of her Latin name is "gilded silver-face.") She was well over an inch long. I rushed inside to get the camera, and my first picture when I got back was of her busily wrapping up her latest prey.
She finished with that quickly and then headed back to the center of her web.
1680x1050 wallpaper
The dense, zigzag vertical structure is called a "stabilimentum", and is characteristic of the webs of these kinds of spiders. Scientists don't know for sure why they do it. (The original theory, now discarded, is that it helped stabilize the web somehow.) According to one of my Facebook commenters, it has been discovered that the stabilimentum reflects ultraviolet light. Some flowers use ultraviolet patterns to attract pollinating insects, so the purpose may be to attract prey in that fashion.
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Mike
August 23rd, 2015 at 8:47 am
Certainly a surprise to see up here!
Also, your pictures aren't loading well on LJ, even though they're fine on your gallery. Is your gallery host blocking/throttling hotlinks?
Suzanne
August 23rd, 2015 at 9:15 pm
My webhost's net presence was very flaky last night (unreachable on and off), so probably that was continued flakiness, and it was just chance that you encountered it on LJ but not in the gallery. Let me know if you have the problem again, though.