Appearance and Distribution
Nephila spiders vary from reddish to greenish yellow in color with distinctive whiteness on the cephalothorax and the beginning of the abdomen. Like many species of the superfamily Araneoidea, they have striped legs specialized for weaving (where their tips point inward, rather than outward as is the case with many wandering spiders). Their contrast of dark brown/black and green/yellow allows warning and repelling of potential predators to whom their venom might be of little danger.
Golden orb-weavers reach sizes of 4.8 - 5.1 cm (1.5 – 2 in) in females, not including legspan, with males being usually 2/3 smaller (less than 2.5 cm, 1 in). The largest specimen ever recorded was a 6.9 cm (2.7 in) female N. clavipes (which is now debated to have been a new yet undocumented subspecies) from Queensland, that was able to catch and feed on a small-sized finch. In 2012 a large individual was photographed killing and consuming a half-meter-long brown tree snake in Freshwater, Queensland. Species from Taiwan have been known to reach over 5 in (130 mm), legspan included, in mountainous country.
Golden silk orb-weavers are widespread in warmer regions throughout the world, with species in Australia, Asia, Africa (including Madagascar), and the Americas. One species, N. clavipes, occurs in the United States of America, where it ranges throughout the coastal southeast and inland, from North Carolina to Texas.
Nephila spiders are the oldest surviving genus of spiders, with a fossilized specimen known from 165 million years ago.
Read more about this topic: Golden Silk Orb-weaver
Famous quotes containing the words appearance and, appearance and/or distribution:
“When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Most lovers ... picture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else—their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)