Anyone good with spiders

[paul m]

Any clues as to what this might be? Taken last week on a holm oak in the Basque Country. Keeping very still, looking for all the world like a tree-climbing crab! Its body is about 2cms long.

[paul m]

Has anyone seen a spider 8m tall?

[ozwildlife]

Paul, this looks similar to some of the spiders in Araneidae family we get in Australia. The one below is the Garden Orb Weaver - Eriophora transmarina. These are nocturnal spiders. During the day they rest on a branch or foliage with legs drawn up like in your photo. They come out at dusk to build their web and pull it down at dawn.

[Pudding4brains]

Hi All,

As you asked for someone "good" with spider I should probably keep very quiet, but hey - my PC had just crashed after I saw this thread so I figured I'd flip through my Bellmann Central European Spider Atlas while waiting for the disk integrity proggie to complete.

Seems Araneus angulatus would have such protruding "shoulders" but these don't grow bigger than 18mm, and most images I see of these have striped legs (but I don't even know if that is variable).

In the south there should also be Araneus circe that is almost identical with A. angulatus (althoug I seem to find images with less striped legs!) and Araneus grossus that is larger (up to 25mm), but it has a clear white ring on the front of the abdomen.

Then the book lists Gibbaranea bituberculata and G. gibbosa with similar "shoulders", but they're both smaller (8-10mm).

Of course, to the south there may be more species or "our" species may grow a tad larger, so who knows ... but maybe these names help to google a bit more efficiently

For now, my 2 cents would probably be on "Something like Araneus circe".

Good luck!
Arp

P.S. This thread (and this one) on insecte.org have some more "thoughts" on these animals. The second thread also links to this key (based on genitalia etc)

[ozwildlife]

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Hi All,

As you asked for someone "good" with spider I should probably keep very quiet

good point - maybe I should have kept very quiet too. I don't know much about European spiders at all, but I'm sure I'll learn here.

[Pudding4brains]

Originally Posted by ozwildlife

good point - maybe I should have kept very quiet too

Please don't Very much like to see the images from your side of the world!

Until people get soooo irritated with my "uneducated guesses" that they snap at me, I'll happily keep guessing too - for me it's just about the best way to learn more (and they'll know soon enough understand how to 'rate' my nincompoop thoughts)