Spinybacked Orbweaver
Gasteracantha cancriformis · Spiders
Spinybacked Orbweaver
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, 7 February 2026
A Spinybacked Orbweaver in her web at Fairchild in February, a small spider of gardens and woodland edge across the American South and the tropics, and one of the commonest spiders in a Florida garden.
The hard white shell studded with red spines is carried only by females; males are smaller, plain brown and rarely noticed. The spines are thought to deter birds from swallowing the spider whole, and the shape - wider than it is long - is unusual enough among orb weavers that the species is sometimes called the crab spider, though it isn't one. The web is decorated with tufts of white silk, apparently to warn birds off flying through it.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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