Susanna Freymark
Along Bungawalbin-Whiporie Road, spiders escaping floodwaters took to spinning their webs higher off the ground.
Photographer Jimmy Malecki took some stunning photos of the webs and of two different spiders. See below.
IndyNR.com asked National Parks & Wildlife about the spiders.
“We think they are the grey/common house spider and St Andrews Cross spider. It’s a response to excess wet weather where they can go crazy spinning webs like this,” National Parks said.
We asked the Australian Museum for information. Here’s what they said:
“This is an example of a mass webbing event. These typically occur after flooding.
“It is a combination of many spiders being displaced from the grass, moving around and each laying down their silk lines which can combine with actual catching webs and build up into sheets as shown here.
“Also there is typically an abundance of insect food so fast-reproducing species will be feeding up then their masses of emerging spiderlings are also contributing to the swathes of silk.”
The stripy spider was identifed as Argiope trifasciata. The others as wolf spiders.
“Those are typically a major component of these mass webbing events because they are often abundant in the kinds of grassy moist habitats where flooding occurs,” the museum said.
Here are more photos:
