I’m new to this arachnology business, so when I find an unfamiliar species, beyond the ones I encounter all the time in familiar habitats, I get completely lost. This one, for instance, is very pretty, and I looked at the shape of the abdomen and said “Theridiidae?”, but then I saw the lack of stripes at the limb joints and the very striking white markings, and I switched to “Idunno?”.
I’m going to have to plug away at this for years before I acquire a clue. It’s intimidating.
Looks a lot like your granddaughter’s afternoon snack to me.
Stumped — I was wondering what poopyhead was doing posting about cricket. Had I gone to the wrong FtBlog? Did Mano Singham stage a takeover?
Ah. No. It is poopyhead, in the thrall of beasties with eight legs / arms / tentacles. Nothing to see here, move along… Leave it to poopyhead to prefer musty old sheds, filled with creepy-crawlies and surrounded by overgrown fields, rather than overgrown fields surrounded by musty old stands filled with empty seats and abandoned bottles.
Trashline Orbweaver (Cyclosa turbinata)
“The eco-savvy Trashline Orbweaver reuses dried leaf and plant debris around it to enhance its web.”
https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Trashline-Orb-Weaver
Source: I looked at a terrifying list of spider pictures until I found yours.
Is that seek app you talked about last Friday helping? It’s been great with the plants around my house. Haven’t tried it on any spiders yet. Tried a minute ago but it’s late evening here and I couldn’t get anything to focus.
Imagine were something like Deepmind to be set to the task of the taxonomy of a critter from a photo. Processing in the Cloud would make for an app for anyone.
Dictynidae?
Bears a resemblance to this one: https://bugguide.net/node/view/956565
Seek doesn’t quite have the detail I need, but yes, I’ve been doing the same thing. I don’t know plants at all, so I’ve been identifying the shrubbery.