Spiders native to East Asia arrived in 2014. Will they spread across the United States?
A large East Asian spider this year has spun its thick, golden web onto power lines, porches and orchards across North Georgia, USA, a proliferation that has led some homeowners to lock themselves in their homes. houses and has sparked an avalanche of anxiety messages on social media.
In metro Atlanta, Jennifer Turpin, who calls herself arachnophobic, stopped blowing leaves from her garden after inadvertently entering a web created by the Joro spider. Stephen Carter has avoided a trail along the Chattahoochee River, where he encountered cobwebs from Joro every dozen steps.
Further east, in Winterville, Georgia, Will Hudson’s porch was rendered useless by the abundance of 10-foot-deep Joro cobwebs. Hudson estimates that he has killed more than 300 spiders on his property.
“The fabrics are a real mess,” said Hudson, an entomologist at the University of Georgia. Nobody wants to go out in the morning, go downstairs and fill their faces with spider webs ”.
The Joro spider can measure up to 8 cm wide
La Joro (Trichonephila clavata) is part of a group of spiders known as orb weavers for their highly organized wheel-shaped webs. Joro’s females, common in Japan, China, Korea, and Taiwan, have colorful yellow, blue, and red markings on their bodies. They can be 8 cm wide when their legs are fully extended.
It is unclear exactly how and when the first Joro spider arrived in the US In Georgia, a researcher identified one about 80 miles northeast of Atlanta in 2014. They have also been found in South Carolina, and Hudson is convinced that they will spread south.
It is also unclear why they are so abundant this year, although experts agree that their number has skyrocketed. (I)
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