Recently, a large spider originating in East Asia has woven thick golden webs on power lines, porches, vegetable patches and residents' backyards in northern Georgia, and is spreading further, causing some uneasy homeowners to be driven indoors and sparking a flood of anxious social media posts, the Associated Press reported.
In Atlanta, Jennifer Turpin is a man who claims to have arachnophobia. After she inadvertently touched the spider web, she never cleaned the leaves in her backyard again.
Stephen Carter also stopped walking along the Chattahutch River, where he encountered large cobwebs every dozen steps he walked.
Will Hudson, an entomologist at the University of Georgia, said: "These spider webs are really bad, no one wants to go out in the morning, go down the steps, and get a face full of spider webs." ”
The spider, known as the Bride of the Stick (Trichonephila clavata), is a large web-weaving spider of the family Apatosaurus, known as the Web Weaver because of its highly organized, wheel-shaped web. It is common in China (including Taiwan), Japan, and South Korea. Female spiders have yellow, blue, and red markings on their bodies. When their legs are fully extended, the width can reach 8 centimeters.
It's unclear how and when the first rod-like bride spider landed in the United States. In Georgia, a researcher found a bride with a rod in 2014, 128 kilometers northeast of Atlanta. Subsequently, they were also found in South Carolina. Hudson believes these large spiders will spread throughout the southern United States.
But researchers aren't sure why they've proliferated so much this year.
Paula Cushing, a spider scientist at the Denver Museum of Natural Sciences, said: "We have seen natural increases and decreases in populations of many different species, which may be related to local climatic conditions, especially changes in rainfall. ”
Cushing and other experts say the rod bride spider is no threat to humans or cats or dogs unless they themselves are threatened.
Hudson said a researcher who used her hands to collect spiders reported occasional pinching pain, but the spiders never broke her skin.
However, researchers have not fully agreed on what effects the spider will have on other species and the environment.
Debbie Gilbert, 67, can't wait to find out. She took a zero-tolerance approach to spiders at her home in Norcross, Georgia, wrapping sticks around cobwebs and hitting them on the ground.
"I don't advocate killing any life," she said. I was at peace with the spiders around me and everything else. But it (the rod bride spider) doesn't belong here, nothing more. ”
Turpin, 50, tried to light a web of a stick-rodded bride's spider at her home in East Cobb, but she quickly stepped back, fearing the web would fall on her. She asked the neighbors to move it away.
Nancy Hinkle, another entomologist at the University of Georgia, said the spider helps keep down mosquitoes and flies and is one of the few spiders that will catch and eat brown badger bugs, which are serious pests to many crops.
Ann Rypstra, who studies spider behavior at the University of Miami, was more cautious in assessing the potential effects of the rod-and-groom spider and said more research is needed.
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