Black & Yellow Argiope
This gal appeared at our kitchen window in September 2006 and stayed with us for two months. It is a black & yellow argiope. The top left is a top-down view and the top left is a bottoms-up view. While just 'hanging out' the spider often groups its legs in pairs, so it looks like there are four legs. The body length of the female is typically between 3/4" and 9/8" - this one was about half-way in this range. Supposedly the female eats and then re-builds the web each night. We would often see her building her web early morning (about 5 am). Sometimes the web would have an additional zig-zag structure called stabilimenta (below-left). When disturbed she would vibrate her web. She moved very quickly to wrap her prey - the job would be completed in less than 15 seconds or so after the prey hit the web (below-right). The male of the species has a body size about a third of the female. They often make webs nearby and that's what we observed. The male only stayed a short time. The female produces an egg sac that supposedly holds between 300-1500 eggs and builds an elaborate web structure to suspend it (far bottom). The sac stays there, often through the cold, until the eggs turn into hatchlings. We did not see this with our sac - which is still hanging there.

In late October we had a cold snap one night and the next morning Charlotte was lying on the window sill - dead. It was sad. Apparently the female has a life span of a year in colder climates and 2-3 years in warmer climates. Source of information.