Hello and happy Monday! I hope your day is going smoothly.

Today’s macro Monday is the majestic garden orb weaver spider. I love these beautiful little guys.

Some facts I find interesting about Orb Weavers are,

– Orb Weavers are found throughout New Zealand and also in Australia and the Pacific Islands.
– They make circular webs, with a central hub (that you can commonly find them hanging out in, usually late in the day/nighttime as they hide during the day), and it is surrounded by circular sticky web that catches prey.
– Webs are vertical and the spiders usually hang with their heads downward.
– Many Orb Weavers rebuild their web every evening. They will consume their current web, rest for an hour or so and then rebuild a new web in the same approx. location.
– Sometimes they mate in the central hub of the web. Male spiders having to navigate the sticky part of the web, trying not to get eaten. Upon reaching the hub he mounts the female. Other times the male constructs a mating web outside of her web and attracts the female via vibratory courtship, they mate on this thread.
– 80 % of smaller male Orb Weavers are attacked and cannibalised during their first copulation. All surviving males die after their second copulation.
– Survival of the first copulation is linked with how long the male copulates for. Males that copulate for less than 5 seconds have a higher chance of surviving, whereas males who copulate a little longer (more than 10 seconds) are certain to die.

Anyway…

Thank you for visiting. Have a wonderful week.