Tropical tent-web spider
The tropical tent-web spider builds a web shaped like a flat tent, not like a normal round web. Many of these spiders can live together and their webs can cover a whole tree. Some are black and white, others brown.
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Fun facts
Its web is not sticky, and it does not have to build a new one every day.
In a colony every spider has its own web, but all the webs are joined together.
It rests during the day and hunts at night.
A scientist first saw it in citrus trees in Yemen about 260 years ago. That is where its name citricola comes from.
In Florida the females can change the colour of their bodies to hide in the web.
Most asked questions about Tropical tent-web spider
?Why is it called a tent-web spider?
Because its web is flat and shaped like a tent instead of a round wheel.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cyrtophora citricola
- Named by
- Forsskål, 1775
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, Europe, North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Cyrtophora citricola (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 picture taken by Olaf Leillinger. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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