Nephilengys cruentata
I was very glad to find out the species of this spider, as I grew up playing with them.
These are the most common spiders in our garden. We have several of them on our outside walls, and my mother likes to leave them undisturbed so they can catch mosquitoes. So we see them as our friends and partners.
To my surprise, these are not originally Brazilian spiders, and in fact, they can only be found in a small part of south east Brazil, exactly where I lived! They were everywhere in our garden, so I thought they were everywhere in the world. Silly me. No wonder it took me so long to identify it.
As it turns out, this is an African spider. The genus Nephilengys contains only six species, and they inhabit the tropical portion of Africa, and they spread to other tropical areas, such as the East Pacific islands and small areas in Brazil, Paraguay, and Colombia. The N. cruentata is the only species in the genus that can be found in South America.
The name Nephilengys means “similar to Nephila“, (I think they are not similar at all!), and cruentata means “bloody”. That refers to a bright red mark that the females have on their abdomen. Too bad this picture doesn’t show that. If I knew that that was the defining characteristic of the species, I would have poked it and made it turn around for me!
They make HUGE webs. I’m talking meter long webs. They really like to have the spot between a side wall and the roof, where they can make a web shaped like a wedge, and put a tight little tunnel right where the wall and the roof meet, so they can get in there and feel safe and forget about the world. In South Africa, they are commonly known as “hermit spiders”. I think that is why.
Nephilengys cruentata by The Bug Lady, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tags: arachnid, entomology, orb weaver, spider
