Author Tissa Ratnayeke ◦
Five fantastic spiders from around Darwin…🙂
Spiders are one of the most abundant fauna groups in our environment. They occupy just about every climate and habitat niche, including our homes, yet most people know very little about them and remain extremely vary of them.
Spiders have fascinating life stories. Hopefully sharing snippets of information about their lives can help breakdown some of the uncertainty that people have around spiders and encourage some of you to be more thoughtful and curious about these remarkable creatures.
Here are five different species of spiders. I could write multiple paragraphs about each, but have restrained myself to just a few sentences to make it an easy read for you. See individual photos for IDs and descriptions. Enjoy. 🙂
Isn’t she a stunner. Two-spined Spider (Poecilopachys australasia), found throughout most of coastal eastern Australia and around Darwin. Has a body about the size of a large green pea, the males are tiny, about 2 mm. These spider are really cool as they can also rapidly change the distribution of colour which this one was doing while I was photographing her. They remain hidden under a leaf during the day and come out at night to spin a horizontal web.
I think this beautiful spider deserves a more inspiring common name…🙂
Evening snack. A Round Ant Eater spider (Zenodorus orbiculatus), about 5-6 mm long, feeding on Iridomyrmex pallidus and also checkout the bright orange mite sucking on the ant’s abdomen. This is one of the jumping spiders. They are prowling hunters, actively searching for prey while on the move, which they find using their superb vision. Jumping spiders remind me of the large cats in how they plan, stalk and capture prey. 🙂
Lynx spiders are all about spiky legs. They are a sit-and-wait ambush predator. Many similar looking species in this family found throughout most of Australia.🙂
This is Trichonephila plumipes, one of Australia’s three species of Golden Orb Weavers – all three are also our largest web-building spiders. Their common name is derived from the golden colour of their silk which is clearly visible in this photo. 🙂
Despite its fearsome appearance, this is a very timid spider and it’s not very big. It’s an appropriately named Long-jawed Spider (Tetragnatha rubriventris), they are usually found close to water.
The jaws (chelicerae) are made up of two parts – the larger section attached to the head contains the venom glands and the folded second section are the sharp fangs for biting or delivering venom. These spiders have elongated bodies, about 12 mm in this instance. They usually hide during the day and come out at night to build a web that’s orientated about 30° to the horizon.
Footnote & References
- NT Field Naturalists’ Club Inc, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/ntfieldnaturalistsclub/
