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Signature Spider
Argiope luzona
15.4557, 119.922
Field Notes
Description:
For some time now, I have been trying to improve my knowledge of Argiope Spiders, particularly Argiope luzona. Obviously, by taking lots of pictures and reading scientific articles, I have been gradually acquiring a little more knowledge. It is a painfully slow process and I find that each time I come across a new piece of information, it seems to generate several new questions. Sometimes, it feels like I am going backwards, but Project Noah’s system of information sharing (which has often helped me) really kicked into overdrive in the last two or three days and breathed new life into my interest in Argiope. Another Project Noah member (alexander.kerr) quite unexpectedly, sent me a huge amount of detailed information, almost all of which was entirely new to me. If you want to read it, please refer to https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1248665082 As a result of this information and advice, I am planning to go out and make some early morning observations of A. luzona so that I can, perhaps, document the construction of stabilimenta. I would like to jot down a step-by-step record of the starting and finishing time of theweaving of a new orb web, then the order in which the various components of the stabilimentum are added and how long that procedure takes. That will enable me, if successful, to compare my data on A. luzona with alexander.kerr’s data on Argiope appensa. However, I can’t just go out at 3:30 a.m. and blunder around in the dark looking for an Argiope luzona and, if I find one, assume that it is going to add a web decoration to the new orb web which it builds every morning. That would probably be doomed to failure. What I have to do, is go out in the afternoon or early evening, before dark, and find a suitable “target” spider. It should be a spider which already has a stabilimentum on its web when I spot it and it must be in a place that I can access easily in the dark. Then I can be relatively sure (but not guaranteed) that I will have a chance of observing the entire process which will probably begin at around 4:00 a.m. Please see Notes below.
Habitat:
The spider, its exuvia and an uninvited mantis were all spotted together in our front yard on a Dwarf Santan (Ixora coccinea) called Santan-Pula in the Philippines. Plant ID - http://www.stuartxchange.org/Santan.html
Notes:
I went out yesterday afternoon and searched all the likely places, on the farm, for a suitable Argiope on its web with a good example of a stabilimentum. I spotted a few that were almost perfect for my purpose, except in respect of the position of the web. Obviously, I need to have a reasonably clear place to stand to make my observations, I can’t be up to my waist in a tangle of undergrowth where my ability to move around would be hampered, especially in the dark. So, no luck yet, I will have to make another little reconnaissance in a day or two, and keep on doing this until I find a really suitable candidate for my observations. So, why am I writing all of this in my spotting today? Having failed in my first attempt to find the perfect “target” spider for this particular kind of observation, I returned home yesterday at about 4:00 p.m. My wife was in the garden and called out to me “Any luck?”. I answered “No”. She then said “Well, if you are interested, there are two over there, pointing at our hedge”. I walked over to the hedge to check and found an Argiope aemula (a beautiful specimen, but not the right species) which I will put in my next spotting and just 3 or 4 ft. away, there it was, a small, young adult female Argiope luzona. It would have been absolutely perfect, but for the fact that it had no stabilimentum. However there was still hope, because it had just moulted and according alexander.kerr, that could trigger a stabilimentum. So, I took a picture, as it was, and arranged to go out and observe it from 3:30 a.m. until daybreak at 5:15 a.m. this morning. I was not lucky. The web produced this morning was a plain orb web with no decoration. However, all was not lost, I will keep an eye on it just in case. If it does produce a decoration, it is in a perfect location to make the job easy for me. But there is some thing of interest in the single photo I took of this spider yesterday afternoon. The pictures above are just different crops of the same photo. In one picture, I got an Argiope luzona, its exuvia and a cheeky little mantis nymph which was much too close to this deadly spider. Fortunately, the mantis left the scene alive and well.
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