Yellow Garden Spider

Hi Tom, Sorry about taking so long to comment, I was away from home all day. Your spider is an absolute beauty! Of course, you are right, it is a subadult. If it were one of the Argiope species we have here in Philippines, I would not hesitate to say that has just reached the first stage of its adulthood, but I hesitate to say anything with conviction because yours appears to have many differences from our local Argiope spp. and I don't want to make you as confused as I am. Here are some of the differences that I think I see (please don't take these as "gospel" because I am really not sure of anything with this one) :- 1. Your pictures show a combination of a Discoid and a Cruciate - this happens from time to time with our local species, but it seems to be a regular occurrence with A. aurantia, from what I can see in pictures in inaturalist.org. 2. Your spider in https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1130238712 has a Two-arm Stabilimentum which appears to be perpendicular. The photos in inaturalist.org look the same. All of the “arms” of cruciate stabilimenta (of the spiders I have been observing in Philippines) are diagonal componants of One-arm, Two-arm, Three-arm and Four-arm stabilimenta. The only example of a perpendicular arm, in the stabilimenta, that I see here, is the fifth arm of a Five-arm Stabilimentum. The perpendicular Two-arm shown in your pictures does not seem to exist in the species I know (In my part of the Philippines, we have A. luzona, A. aemula and A. catenulata). However, I can’t comment on the other species in the Philippines because I have never encountered them. Sorry, Tom, I have just realized that I am droning on and on, as usual. Sometimes, if I get really interested in something, I just don’t know when to stop and everyone else gets bored to death. John B.

Hi Tom, I will look at this one more carefully, later today. I have to go out right now. It looks interesting. I'll be in touch soon. John B.