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Parasteatoda wau
Parasteatoda wau (formerly Achaearanea wau) is a species of social spider that lives around Wau, Papua New Guinea. The spider exhibits a complex dispersal behavior akin to swarming in social bees. It was first described by Herbert Walter Levi, Yael Lubin, and M.H. Robinson in 1982 as Achaearanea wau, and transferred to the genus Parasteatoda in 2008.
From the article Parasteatoda wau on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
What it does
After spiders in a P. wau colony mate, but before the females lay eggs, web construction activity will sharply increase as the spiders construct a straight highway of silk, about 1m wide and several meters long, away from their web. Once this web is constructed, a subset of the newly fertilized adult female spiders migrate along the highway en masse, forming a new colony, or colonies, at the end of the highway. The parent colony often still remains in place.
== References ==
Wikipedia: “Swarming behavior”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Parasteatoda wau in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 843574.