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Photo: G. Bradley |
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UK
Safari Tip:
To help you identify house and garden spiders there's a superbly
illustrated fold out chart in the Nature Shop - click
here
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Latin name: Argiope bruennichi
Size: The female (right) grows to 18mms, while the male is much smaller at less than 5mms.
Distribution: Found in many counties of southern England.
Months seen: Mainly July to October
Habitat: Low growing grassland
Food: Mostly grasshoppers and crickets.
Special features: This is one of our more exotic looking spiders. It is actually a native spider of Mediterranean areas, and has only recently colonised parts of England.
It builds its web close to the ground in order to catch grasshoppers and crickets, and the female can often be seen hanging upside-down in the middle of her web throughout summer and autumn.
The web features a distinctive zig-zag patterned section running vertically
through it.
 Her large abdomen features yellow, black and white stripes, and her cephalothorax is covered with silver coloured hair.
 When
viewed from the underneath you can see two yellow stripes running lengthways
along the abdomen.
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The male is much smaller, and is only active for a couple of weeks in July. Like many other male spiders, he has to be careful when mating, to ensure he doesn't end up as dinner for the
female.
Despite the warning colouration this is not a dangerous species. The wasp-like
appearance is probably defensive, to deter predators from eating it.
UK Safari Spider Section
Photo of the wasp spider egg sac
UK Safari Creepy-Crawlies Section
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