Argiope male and female

[FlawedCoil82]

Wow Ciphor, you won't drop it. This really has just gotten ridiculous now and I will be ending my part after this. The ignorance you claim I show is no worse than what you are showing by utterly refusing to accept after I have told you repeatedly that I was not responding directly to your post, and by continuing to call me an "expert". I said I am confident enough to identify the typical argiopes my own way when I see them. Never once have I called myself an "expert" or said that I can identify each little variation within the entire species (only the typical ones). So if you wish to continue waving your jerk flag, lets do it in PM so neither of us have to be banned over something so stupid.

Your first image is too zoomed in and blurry. From what I can make out though, it appears to be trifasciata. The second image is of a trifasciata. The third image is of an aurantia (grey splotches against the black are typically what I look for). Fourth image is more difficult. My instinct is telling me aurantia, but around here the only times an aurantia makes a web with no stabilimentum is either the day after a heavy meal, the morning/day after a heavy rain or thunderstorm (not always but sometimes) and usually after laying her eggs. For the fifth image, my instinct tells me I am looking at a light colorerd aurantia since I have seen a few that look like that over the years to where they are more brown and yellow. However, usually it's trifasciata that position their legs like that, so I am going to go with a banded. The final image I would say is a trifasciata. If I am wrong, I won't lose a minute of sleep over it because even experts can misidentify animals even with a college education and professional equipment at their disposal. And of course there are always variations in all species that can tilt the needle either way. But the original poster of this (now silly) thread posted a typical trifasciata that has the most common appearance for that particular species.

 

[Ciphor]

I'll drop it I made my point. 4 out of 6.

You may find it interesting, a group of biologist have confirmed the speculation that stabilimentum is used to prevent birds and other animals from running into the web. There is an article about it somewhere, it was recent about 3 months ago. They tested several Argiope and found the ones that had objects fly through them and destroy the web, always rebuilt the web with stabilimentum afterwards. A separate group was tested with nothing destroying the webs and as a result the majority made no stabilimentum, or had severally less visible stabilimentum. A few from this group, most likely out of stronger instinct, made highly visible stabilimentum.

 

[KnightinGale]

Wow, haven't been on for awhile and hadn't seen this had been revived. May have been better dead, though. To answer a question some time back, no this picture was not taken in Vancouver. In my original post it states my location and I believe below my avatar I have myself listed quite specifically as well. To whomever it was that said people posting just ventral shots for id on the web drove them nuts, I will once again point to my original post. This was not started as an id thread AND I clearly said I did not take a dorsal shot as I would have had to destroy her web to get it. I cared much more about observing this spider than I cared about getting the shot OR a positive id. As to that I had simply given my guess and asked, as an after-thought, what others' OPNINIONS were. Well, those have definitely been shared...vocally and at length. Thanks.
The true point of this thread had been to share pics (including the lucky shot of the male), to share the behaviour between the male and female that I had observed first-hand and to share my excitement over a spider that was new to me. This thread is a little old now. I had a lovely different argiope in my tomatoes this year with strikingly different colouration. Thankfully I did not get any good shots of it so I will not post them here.