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Photo#848498
Black and Yellow Argiope - Argiope aurantia - female

Black and Yellow Argiope - Argiope aurantia - Female
Bergen Swamp, Genesee County, New York, USA
August 6, 2011

 
Hello,this is bugwhiz. what's
Hello,this is bugwhiz. what's that thick band of silk on the web?

 
It's called a
stabilimentum. Examples are on the BG info page, linked. Its function may be to make the web more visible to birds so they don't fly into, and ruin, the web.

 
thanks for the help
thanks for the help. i have some common orb weavers in my yard and now, i know they also had a stabilimentum. at first i didn't know, but you helped me figure it out.

 
Thank you. Yes, it's copyrighted.
Please contact me by email (see my user page) if you'd like to use it.

Great photo!
Great photo of a truly magnificent creature. I used to have these visit my home in Texas. They were gentle giants and would build beautiful, elaborate webs across my window pane and then would wait for bugs to get trapped. After a while, a few days or a week, the spider would pack up and move to a different one of my window panes and sadly eventually leave my home all together. I was always sad when they left since they were such a great addition to the environment around my house, and so beautiful to look at.

This is a beautiful example
Totally awesome creature this is, look at this scary monster image

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