Signature Spider Stabilimentum

The juvenile Argiope luzona shown here is a female and is very small. What I am attempting to show here is that Argiope web decorations may not always get built in one act of construction. In the case of Cyclosa spiders, it is obvious that the decoration starts with one item of “trash” and then more and more gets added until the spider has completed its “creation”. However, when you encounter an Argiope web decoration, it is almost impossible to know if you are looking at something which has been completed in one act, or has been built by “installments” (unless you are lucky enough to see it being built). The web decoration shown in my first picture is called a "Two-armed Discontinuous Cruciate Stabilimentum". That photo was taken on Jan 17th. It is called “Discontinuous” because the two arms do not join at the hub of the web. When I returned to check on this spider, the following day (as I often do), I saw that the gap had been filled and now I was looking at a “Two-armed Continuous Cruciate Stabilimentum”. This is the first time I have seen a “Discontinuous” converted to a “Continuous” stabilimentum. If you look closely at my fourth picture, you should be able to see the section which fills the gap. It has a slightly more translucent quality than the two original “arms”. From now on, I will be looking for these tell-tale signs of this kind of modification.