Mabel orchard orbweaver
Leucauge argyrobapta
Name means: “dipped in silver (from Ancient Greek words)”
The Mabel orchard orbweaver is a small long-jawed orb-weaving spider that looks as if it has been dipped in shiny silver paint. It builds a round web to catch insects.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
From the southern USA, mainly Florida, through Mexico to Brazil
What does it eat?
It catches small flying insects in its round web.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Mabel orchard orbweaver about 1.2 km/h (0.75 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Charles Darwin collected one near Rio de Janeiro in 1832, but that spider was later lost.
2
For years scientists thought it was the same as the orchard orbweaver of the north. Gene tests showed in 2017 that they are two different species.
3
The females of the two species look almost exactly the same, so the easiest clue is where the spider lives.
you asked
Most asked questions about Mabel orchard orbweaver
?Where does the Mabel orchard orbweaver live?
From the southern USA through Mexico to Brazil.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Leucauge argyrobapta
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Tetragnathidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Tetragnathidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Mabel's orchard orb weaver
Where the facts come from
- Leucauge argyrobapta (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Kaldari. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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