When Wesley Huffmaster spotted a big, brightly colored and boldly patterned spider near his home in Colbert last fall, he knew it was unusual. Analysis of its physical characteristics and DNA by scientists at the Georgia Museum of Natural History at the University of Georgia have proven him right, confirming the first known occurrence in North America of Nephila clavata, the East Asian Joro spider. Their findings appear in the online open access journal PeerJ.
The Joro spider belongs to a group of large spiders known as golden orb-web weavers that make enormous, multi-layered webs of gold-colored silk. Species in this group are found throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, including one—the banana spider—that is native to the southeastern U.S.
The Joro spider, widespread in its native Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, is similar in size to the banana spider but its coloring—black legs with yellow-orange stripes and a bright yellow body with bluish-green stripes on its back and red markings on its underside—is distinctive.
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