Actually, we probably do have some. They are all at the genus level. We're trying to be careful to ID them correctly to species. See a probably E. ovata here


I'll have to go out in my yard and inspect the spiders to see if I see any change from last week.

I took a second look, and i don't know about the other Enoplognatha sp. but E. ovatas eggs (the ones I've seen at least) are always extremely white, like a Steatoda grossa egg, with a small bumpy texture. The egg sac in this image appears brown or grey in color with a smooth texture. Not saying it is not a E. ovata egg, just sharing my experience.

... are blue-green in color, so might be some other species' you're seeing with a white, bumpy texture. I can show you some pics later of some verified E. ovata w/ their egg sacs (specimen ID'd under scope).

I'm really not sure now. The only thing I can add, or re-affirm is the redimita color morph with an identical shelter and egg sac that was right next door. May be that the white of the shelter reflecting on the egg sac is making it appear whiter then it is. Is a fully enclosed shelter always used to protect the egg sac of E. ovata?

Yeah, the green leaves and the sun shining can trick the eyes... but E. ovata egg sacs are always blue-green (exactly like the example Lynette showed above). If you take it out and place it on some white paper or something, it becomes an obvious blue-green. They start to look less blue-green after the eggs hatch and the little egg shells get pushed to the outside and the whole egg sac gets stretched out, but other than that, always blue-green. I have kept a lot of E. ovata in captivity and never had one make an enclosed silken shelter around the egg sac, but I can't say with any certainty if that's always the case in nature. In nature, I do see similar shelters made for the spider itself (usually leaves are folded over and the spider sits inside a silken matrix)... I've never come across such an enclosure around the egg sacs I've found in nature, though... but maybe that's something that they build during the vulnerable egg-laying time, then they take it down later, don't know.

Yours probably is Enoplognatha... judging by the underside, at least; not disputing that. There are just so many spiders out there that a single shot of an underside is not very "solid" in most cases. When I take my sweep net out to the bushes that are swarming with E. ovata, a single shake in one spot yields like 4 species of cobweb spider and sometimes additional ones from separate families, so proximity to another E. ovata doesn't always mean it has to also be E. ovata, I guess is my point. But like I said, yours probably is an Eno, though I don't see any proof here that it's ovata and not latimana. I think we actually have a lot of E. latimana mixed up in the E. ovata section, to be honest, but none of them have been seen under a microscope so there's no way to tell for sure. The best description I have for E. latimana (from Roberts 1995) is, "Very similar to E. ovata in general appearance, but usually without red markings and with fewer, or no black spots."

I agree they can be very hard to ID. The only reason I pegged this one E. ovata was the redimita color morph less then an inch away in an exact same style hideway with egg sac. I would have preferred the redimita color morph for an image, but none of my pictures of hers turned out as good as the lineata morphs.