Complete Guide To The Long-Jawed Orb Weaver Spiders

Long-Jawed Orb Weaver Spider Notes

• Long-Jawed Orb Weaver Spiders are mostly nocturnal and can be hard to spot during the day.
  • Often, they hide from predators by stretching out along twigs or plant stems and remaining motionless. These orb weavers stretch their front two pairs of legs forward and their back two pairs of legs backward to camouflage their outlines and blend into the background.
  • Sometimes, they venture out onto their webs to make repairs or investigate vibrations.
• The easiest way to find Long-Jawed Orb Weaver Spiders is to look first for their webs, which are usually either close to water or suspended above it. Then search nearby twigs and stems carefully for the spiders themselves.
  • Long-Jawed Orb Weaver Spiders build distinctive spiral orb webs.
  • The webs look like classic spiral webs, but hang horizontally rather than vertically, and they leave the hubs open.
    • Only the radial support lines extend from the hubs of their webs; the spiders stop spinning the sticky spiral capture strands several inches from the web centers.
• Long-Jawed Orb Weavers can walk on water.
  • These spiders risk being knocked off their webs and into the water by strong winds, heavy rain, or rising water levels.
  • While predators abound on land, fish pose a major and immediate danger to any spider that hits the water so quick escape from the water becomes a priority.
  • Long-Jawed Orb Weaver Spiders evolved the ability to “water walk”. The spiders rest on the surface tension of the water and use their front six legs to push towards land while dragging their back pair of legs.
  • One North Carolina orb weaver species, Tetragnatha elongata, can differentiate shoreline from open water and determine the shortest distance to shore when in the water.
    • When they find themselves on open water, the spiders orient themselves towards land and water walk towards safety.
      • These “spiders were approximately 10 times faster on water (mean ± standard deviation; 38.9 ± 20.1 cm/s) than on land (3.6 ± 1.3 cm/s)” (Goedeker, Wrynn, and Gall 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7249).
    • Distance from shore seems to play a part in how quickly the spiders pick their course off the water. Nearer to shore, the spiders pick their direction quickly; farther from shore, they walk in wide circles first, presumably searching for the best route.
    • Sometimes, spiders trapped out on the water release strands of silk to help them travel. The wind catches the fine silk and pulls the orb weavers along (Goedeker, Wrynn, and Gall 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7249).