# My SW Florida Home is Overrun With These Spiders. Can Anyone ID Them, From This Photo?



## 5282jt (Dec 9, 2013)

These do not come in the house. They live all around the outside of my house and really thrive in my pool screen enclosure. My pool screens and the aluminum supports are all but solid spider webs.
Ordinarily, I would leave a few spiders in my pool cage un-molested, to kill insects. However, these spiders are multiplying at an alarming rate and make my pool area ugly and scary to my 6 and 8 year old granddaughters.
Please ID and if possible, suggest a cure. I have sprayed some, as a test, with fly spray and ant and roach spray and they drop down, but are back the next day.
Thank You!
Chuck, in Port Charlotte, Florida


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## aaarg (Dec 9, 2013)

Looks like _Leucauge_ to me.  Harmless & pretty.  
http://bugguide.net/node/view/1998


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## The Snark (Dec 9, 2013)

As aaarg said, Leucauge. One of our particular favorite spiders. With our carport overran with them my wife loaded some onto a potted plant and relocated them to the plants in front of her restaurant the other day. 
You are lucky, having so many orb weavers choosing to decorate your home. Take some time to educate the grand daughters, study the spiders and their web building, and perhaps become a little more aware that all us animals live in a web life together, aware of the others or not. If you find a spider building a web that is in the way, you can usually scoop the web with a finger, getting the spider to dangle on a drop line. Then just place the animal in a more suitable location out of harms way. With your grand children you have an excellent opportunity to decorate bushes as you would a Christmas tree. Placing spiders and seeing if they remain in that location. You can also get them to build one web next to the other with semi communal guy lines.

These are excellent spiders to observe how orb weavers operate. The third pair of legs, as with nearly all orb weavers, is short and used only to stand on a web line. That rear most pair is used to manipulate the web coming from the spinnerets. The front most pairs are used to manipulate existing webbing, capture prey and clean out debris from the web.

 Also, the spray you used is much more harmful to yourself than to the naturally chemical resistant spider.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Ambly (Dec 9, 2013)

The Snark is no doubt right about the pesticides.  Plus, if you kill of the spiders you might have something worse on your hands - possibly worse spiders!

Good man, Chuck, for coming here and posting this.  You must be at very least sympathetic to nature to come here looking for the best and least problematic way to keep them out.  Give them an experience with the spiders or other local inverts - show them you are not afraid and that they should be respected if even not liked.  They are young, yes, but turning the eyes of the young to the interconnectedness of nature goes a long way.  Especially because we live in a world that needs as many environmentally sensitive folks as possible.

Not the most spider friendly, but if you tear down their webs often they may simply find homes elsewhere.   Good luck, Chuck, and let us know how it goes.


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## pitbulllady (Dec 9, 2013)

Confirming what everyone else has said-_Leucauge venusta_, or a closely related species.  They are harmless, shy and beautiful spiders, love to eat mosquitoes, and I bet you don't have enough of THOSE down in FL, right?  Consider yourself fortunate to still have these around; here in SC, we only get them in the spring.  They do not seem to like really hot weather, and sadly, they only live a few weeks, anyway, then they're gone until next spring.  Right now, winter has set in with quite the vengeance, and we've actually had a couple of snow flurries, really odd for this early in the season, so that means no outside spiders.  All the aerial webbers are dead, and all the _K. hibernalis_ are dormant, although I did catch one big female _Hogna carolinensis_ earlier today on the kitchen floor.  I miss not seeing spiders outside for several months.

pitbulllady


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## The Snark (Dec 9, 2013)

It's really a matter of getting one's brain properly oriented. Our ongoing chores each morning, more or less in order, are going into the carport ducking webs, feeding the dogthing, relocating the spiders to nearby bushes (and if the jeep is going to be used, relocating the spiders from the seating area, steering wheel spokes and shifters), feeding the cat, go out the back door and relocate any spiders around it, do the cat box duties, check the washing machine for spiders, snakes and geckos and start the laundry. It's a labor of love really. If you called it pest management then the humans would be the pests as they are the minority and the invasive animals.

When we first moved here a friend who owns a commercial pest control service gave us a free termite and pest control treatment. 40 gallons of commercial pesticide was injected into the soil around the foundations of the house and another 40 gallons over the entire yard. The effect on the overall critter population was near nil. Once the environment recovered from that horror we settled in comfortably among the local residents. We learned their habits, their times of year, and their unique ways and means of integrating with each other and the environs. With our knowledge it subtly shifted from man against the environment to a delightful pseudo symbiosis and our frontal lobes being put to use in helping establish a harmonious relationship all around. 

And now it is with a certain degree of joy when we meet up with our other friends in residence. Sometimes a concern as when the big red centipedes, scorpions, cobras, kraits or when the viper came calling, but always a constant reminder we can learn to live among the animals in one way or another and as the most developed animal of the lot we are obligated to be the stewards and caretakers of the rest.

But probably the best of all is the times of the year when the orb weavers are present. From micro miniature webs an inch or two across in the spokes of the steering wheel to the occasional giant nephila choosing to grace our garden with her spectacular webs. Trying to work out where the webs are and what pathways are available to us bipeds, sometimes crossing off visiting parts of the garden for a few weeks or months. It's worth it, just to see those fabulous constructions, often dew drop speckled in the early morning misty light. I'll take our infested life here against any sterile death zone of the average pesticide laden suburbia.

Reactions: Like 2


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## Smokehound714 (Dec 10, 2013)

I WISH these overran my property! one of the most beautiful spiders i can think of.


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## The Snark (Dec 10, 2013)

These are one of the most endearing of orb weavers. I love watching them do the sticky circular webs, their bottoms high in the air then that little bob, move, bob.


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## Smokehound714 (Dec 10, 2013)

Poor me.. all I have are 20mm jumping spiders swarming the property


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## 5282jt (Dec 10, 2013)

WOW! I have used many forums, to learn many different things. The response here amazed me! They really are beautiful spiders and their webs are interesting-except where they run up my screens, along the aluminum supports.
I will take your advice, now that I know they don't bite etc, and relocate them to my hydroponic garden, shed area and fencing etc. 
Thank You!

Reactions: Like 3


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