Behavioral Mimicry in the Golden Garden Spider
I witnessed a pretty awesome display today by my friendly neighborhood Golden Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia), that I had never before seen. In fact, I had no idea that spiders would make such defensive displays.
As I approached her web, I noticed the web start to vibrate back and forth in quite an exaggerated fashion. So I ran and grabbed my camera. When I got back out she had stopped, but she started back up immediately as I got close.
Note - my hand is actually about 6 inches from the web. Also, my hand produced no wind (you can see this clearly toward the end of the video - the last ten seconds are by far the best).
Considering the bright yellow and black markings, my nearest guess is that she was mimicking the movement of a carpenter bee or some other poisonous hymenopteran (we have lots of carpenter bees). It seems clear that it was her way of saying "get the fuck away from me! I'm dangerous". Of course, it may be that it's not mimicry at all, but to me it looks very similar to the movement of the carpenter bees against that very same wood as they bob forward and backward.
For another cool picture of an Argiope, see my previous post (which also has some cool black widows from my house).
September 3rd, 2008 - 05:14
Nice spider video! This looks like an interesting blog, where have you been hiding?? Linked and RSS’ed!
September 5th, 2008 - 18:24
Thanks! FYI: the RSS address recently changed.
September 8th, 2008 - 22:40
When I see spiders doing that, they usually buzz up to a complete blur. I thought it was to make themselves virtually inivisible to passing predators. Maybe yours was cold?
Nice video.
September 1st, 2010 - 20:03
The reason the common garden spider S.p. Argiope aurantia
rocks it’s web back in forth is the same reason it is brightly colored (florescent yellow). It wants you to notice it…she see’s your nearing her precious web and doesn’t want to waste the energy building a new web. They are a very large spider and use their size, color and web movements to dissuade terrestrial mammals from destroying their web. I have personally seen whitetail deer avoid large female garden spiders that web over deer paths in prairie. I have also been bit by them it hurts…about like a bee sting. This is probably why the deer avoid them…