East Asian Joro Spiders--and Spiny Orb Weavers

Keeping with the spider theme, I noticed a new one a couple of weeks ago near the garage.  The largest spiders I typically see are the argiopes.  This is the time of year when they're big.  Down in south Georgia there are banana spiders, which are about the same size or larger.

Another species that has only been in Georgia a few years is the East Asian Joro.  I noticed my specimen by chance; give its size, it has been around a while but has gone unnoticed.  it has a web running between a crepe myrtle and the garage.  This web has both a male and female in it, or at least it did at the time I took the pictures.  There's no indication they have an adverse impact on native spiders, so I'm going to leave this one alone.

Subsequent to this discovery, I mowed for the first time in about three weeks--it has been dry here--and I saw that I don't have one pair; I have about a dozen.  None of them had webs up the last time I mowed, but they are out now in force.

Their web is very large, and despite the appearance above, it does have some symmetric properties.  The silk also has a distinctly golden color that doesn't really come out in any of these pictures.

Another species I have a lot of this year is spiny orb weavers.  I always see a few, but this year they're everywhere.  Less ubiquitous this year are the barn spiders; they're another species that hangs huge webs this time of the year (that I usually blunder into in the dark).  But I don't see a lot of them.  I hope the Joros haven't eaten them.