Nephila edulis

Nephila edulis
Female Nephila edulis, Perth, Western Australia.[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Suborder: Araneomorphae
Family: Nephilidae
Genus: Nephila
Species: N. edulis
Binomial name
Nephila edulis
(Labillardière, 1799)
Synonyms

Aranea edulis
Epeira edulis
Nephila imperatrix
Nephila eremiana

Nephila edulis is a species of large spider of the Nephilidae family. It is referred to the common name Australian Golden Orb Weaver.[2] It is found in Australia, in both tropical and temperate regions, and in parts of New Guinea and New Caledonia.

It has a large body size variability, females can reach a body length of up to 40 millimetres, males about 7 mm. The cephalothorax is black with a white pattern on the back, and a yellow underside; the abdomen is grey to brown.

The web is about 1 metre in diameter and protected on one or both sides by a strong "barrier" web. N. edulis breeds from February to May, and produces an average of 380 eggs.

Name

The species was first collected and named by Jacques Labillardiere, in Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse (1799),[3] becoming the second Australian spider to be described by a European naturalist. [4] The first was Gasteracantha fornicata.

The species name edulis means "edible" in Latin. Labillardiere wrote: "Les habitans de la Nouvelle-Calédonie appellent nougui cette espèce d'araignée, que je désigne sous le nom d' aranea edulis (araignée que les Calédoniens mangent)." (The inhabitants of New Caledonia call this spider "nougui". I have described it under the name Aranea edulis, meaning spiders that the New Caledonians eat.)

Several Nephila species are considered a delicacy in New Guinea, "plucked by the legs from their webs and lightly roasted over an open fire".[5]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Golden orb weavers Ed Nieuwenhuys, Ronald Loggen 1997, 2002, Jurgen Otto 2005. Retrieved 2007-04-07.
  2. ↑ arachne.org.au http://www.arachne.org.au
  3. ↑ Labillardière, J. 1799. Relation du voyage à la recherche de La Pérouse, fait par ordre de l'Assemblée constituante. Paris Vol. 2 pp. 240-241
  4. ↑ Davies, Valerie Todd; et al. (30 Mar 2006). "Order Araneae: Spiders". Australian Faunal Directory. Government of Australia. Retrieved 2009-03-06.
  5. ↑ Meyer Rochow, V.B. (1973). Edible insects in three different ethnic groups of Papua and New Guinea. Am J. Clin. Nutr. 26:673-677.

Gallery

Images of N. edulis
Side view, Sydney female 
Back view, Sydney female 
Bottom view, Sydney female 
Back view, Western Australia female 
A Queensland female and a locust fight in its web 

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, April 12, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.