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Signature Spider Web
Argiope luzona
15.456, 119.922
Field Notes
Description:
Argiope luzona (Walckenaer, 1841). This is a very young adult female spider. I know that it is young because its colourful dorsal markings (which also indicate a female) are not yet fully developed and its legs are very pale and weakly marked, compared to the dark, strongly marked legs of a mature adult. It is also quite small (about 6 mm. long, excluding the legs). So, its overall appearance gives me the impression that it has probably been making cruciate web decorations (another indication of adulthood) for about two weeks. The web decoration in my photo, taken this morning, is a very neat looking "Two-arm Continuous Cruciate Stabilimentum". However, none of this is what caught my attention when I took the above photo. Please see Notes.
Habitat:
This Signature Spider was spotted in our backyard. Its web was moored on two plants; a Painted Nettle (Plectranthus scutellarioides) locally called Mayana and a Miracle fruit (Crescentia cujete) called Kalabas in the Philippines. Plant information from stuartxchange.org.
Notes:
My attention was drawn to this spider's web by the huge chunk which is missing. No orb-weaver spider makes a web with one third of the orb missing. This is damage from a very heavy and high-speed "fly through", possibly by a Rhinoceros Beetle, or something of similar size, but the damage is of little importance. What took my breath away, when I was cropping my photo for this spotting, was the repair which the spider had made. It has to be understood that this kind of web is held together by tension. In a case like this, where six or seven of the radials were severed, it is almost miraculous that the entire web was not pulled apart by the counter-tension from the remaining radials on the opposite side. Even more amazing is the device used by the spider in its emergency repair. You can see, to the left of the spider, a triangular shape formed by more than 20 silk strands. That looks like and probably fulfills the function of a "gusset". A gusset was a favourite device of engineers, during the industrial revolution when iron bridges were being built in railway systems. Almost every joint on an iron bridge was strengthened by a gusset which could resist the forces of tension and compression. Modern civilization was built on gussets. How, on earth, did this spider learn about gussets?
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