More spider help...

[Footy Chick]

I found this fellow has set up shop in the back yard overnight, right over the spot where I planned to do some paving in the next week or so. The size of his web is enormous!

Can anyone identiy him and whats the best method of moving him on bar spraying half a can of mortein.

[cennals05]

It's a golden orb weaver. They're everywhere at the moment. Was only looking at a couple in my parents backyard last night.

No idea how you could move it without killing it though. It is harmless so you could just pick it up and put it in another part of the garden.

[Footy Chick]

pick it up...you're funny

[Media Park]

Mortein. Just Mortein.

[heater31]

I have 3 spiders living in my office window at work. The Accounts Girls run like the wind when they see them. No idea what type of arachnid they are but they don't harm me so I don't harm them. In fact I help them by herding flies and other insects into their webs so they can eat.

[A Mum]

Mortein. Just Mortein.

Agrees with this...lol

[Pseudo]

There are several of them in the garden chez Pseudo at present. One parked right outside our front door, complete with a mate (much smaller - I assume this is the male, and the large one the female). They are quite harmless. Leave yours alone.

[Psyber]

It's a golden orb weaver. They're everywhere at the moment. Was only looking at a couple in my parents backyard last night.
No idea how you could move it without killing it though. It is harmless so you could just pick it up and put it in another part of the garden.

Correct ID from cennals,
I used to see a lot of them when I had the farm.
They are harmless,but I used to fish them out of the web with a rake, carry them away from pathways, and drop them in a tree somewhere.
The red backs hanging around the light switches in the shed/garage were more of a worry.
I accidentally "patted" one while groping for the switch one night -I felt something move under my fingers, drew back and went to the car for a torch.
I was a largish female guarding an egg sack. So, I was lucky not to be bitten.

I did get bitten,several times, by a large female white-tail [18mm] a few years ago, but apart from a sore arm for a few days came out unscathed.
[She'd dropped through an exhaust fan over the shower and didn't like the soap on my skin.]

[Footy Chick]

There are several of them in the garden chez Pseudo at present. One parked right outside our front door, complete with a mate (much smaller - I assume this is the male, and the large one the female). They are quite harmless. Leave yours alone.

It's not that I mind so much having him there, it's just that it's in a really inconvenient spot as it's built such a big web which goes down to the ground where I shall be laying new pavers in the next week or two.

I like the rake idea, I might do that, just to get it out of the way. I've been procrastinating the backyard reno's for about 5 years. A bloody spider aint gonna stop me this time

[fish]

No need to kill them, just break their web and they usually won't build one in the same place again.

I've got a large web in my yard in an out of the way place and it's no problem the spiders stay in them all the time.

[mighty_tiger_79]

also they sometimes dismantle the web and move on after a day

had one last week with a web half the size of my driveway

had one last night out front of house and was still there today, obviously got a fair catch

[fisho mcspaz]

oooh we've got one of these out the front at the moment!

When I lived with my parents we had a bastard of one in the back yard - used to drop down suddenly when we were having a smoke out the back, then climb back up and drop down again somewhere else. Scared the absolute crap out of me.

[RustyCage]

Ive never seen them before but they are everywhere at the minute! Any idea why they have popped up all of a sudden?

[A Mum]

Ive never seen them before but they are everywhere at the minute! Any idea why they have popped up all of a sudden?

Not enough people using mortein...lol.

We have them everywhere - and they scare the crap out of me
I won't go outside at night time - if I have to go to the clothes line or something I send my husband..lol.

[Pseudo]

Bump.

Of tangential interest:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13134505

[Psyber]

Interesting.
The other day I was reading an article about the larger insects of that era, which included speculation that those fossils may be an indicator that the O2 levels in the air may have been higher back then.
That idea is based on the principal that insects etc. don't have lungs and depend on oxygen perfusion through pores in the exoskeleton, which limits size.
The other possibility I wondered about was whether higher moisture levels in the air may have meant thinner exoskeletons and more pores were viable, as water loss would have been less of an issue.

One could speculate that higher CO2 levels may mean warmer climates, wetter due to more evaporation and rain, more vegetation growth and therefore more O2 production and less water loss from bodies.
But from the Milankovitch cycles the peak CO2 levels appear to have been in the periods 120 -140 million years ago and 200 - 250 mya
They were at one of there lows at the "about 165" mya quoted as the dating in the article for this spider.
I wonder what the degree of accuracy of the dating is - around +/- 20% would make such speculation more likely to fit..