Family: Araneidae, Orb Weavers view all from this family

Description The Common Orb Weaver is a member of the family Araneidae. Orb weavers comprise a huge family of spiders with several hundred North American species. These spiders vary greatly in shape, color, and size, measuring 1/16-1 1/8" (2-28 mm) long. They have 8 eyes arranged in 2 horizontal rows of 4 eyes each. Their jaws, or chelicerae, usually have a small bump, or boss, in the outer margin, although some species lack this boss. The male is commonly much smaller than the female; males of some species bear special spurs of clasping spines on their legs. Most orb weavers spin spiraling orb webs on support lines that radiate outward from the center. The plane of the web may be vertical, horizontal, or slanting. Although uloborids, ray spiders, and tetragnathids also build orb webs, each family has a different type of spiral thread, and usually each species adds its own characteristic pattern. The male orb weaver often spins its own orb web in an outlying portion of the female's web. Many orb weavers replace the entire web daily, spinning a new web in the early evening in about an hour. Members of this family exhibit different degrees of sociality - some are found in woods, others inhabit caves and dark places, still others spin webs in grasses. The family was formerly known as the Argiopidae, which included ray spiders and tetragnathids.