Zygiella x-notata

About

Well fed Silver-sided Sector Spider

While the Silver-sided Sector Spider is rarely spotted, this species is at home near human-made structures on all continents except for Australia and Africa apart from some places in North Africa. With 5-11mm in length for fully grown adult spiders, they are right in between tiny and big species sizewise. A fully grown female Sector Spider might be recognized when sitting in the corner of a room while males and spiderlings may not be spotted at all.

Zygiella spiders are called Missing-sector Orbweb Spiders for their ability to build very intelligently designed nets that have one sector missing from a certain angle on. They start out as spiderlings trying to build "normal" full nets ("Hausspinnen weltweit" ISBN 978-3-662-68849-6) until they develope the ability to find the perfect spot for the missing segment that will contain a strong signal thread. The segment both stabilizes the netting and enables the spider to hide out away from the net and only come running when an insect is caught. While many spiders use a thread like this along with a complete net, Sector Spiders are unique for the way they find the exact angle it works best while giving the net itself a stronger structure made for catching bigger and very agile prey.

The net can be used for a longer time or restructured every morning. Unlike with other species, these nets are usually not handed down to offspring or other spiders but will continuously be recycled into brand-new netting when dirty or damaged.

Slideshow

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Observations

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Deceased

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