May, 1920] Studies in Food of Spiders 243: 



The web is a complete orb and is more than a foot in diameter 

 and it is built in a variety of places. One finds them in bushes, 

 on shrubs, on weed stalks, such as Boneset and Ironweed 

 and high up in trees. I have found them more abundant in 

 deep woods than any place else. In one woods where they were 

 especially abundant, they sought out the open places in the 

 woods. This woods was exceedingly thick and somewhat 

 marshy. In these open places were clumps of elderberry 

 bushes, tall weeds and wild flowers. Some of the webs were 

 attached to the elder bushes and some were high up in the trees. 

 r have seen one side of the web tied to a tree two hundred or 

 three hundred feet distant from the web. A retreat is built 

 above the web and usually to one side of it by tying together 

 several leaves and making a sort of tent. A trap line extends 

 from the retreat to the center of the web and the spider descends 

 this to the web and secures its prey. The spider remains in 

 the retreat during the daytime, but comes out at night and takes 

 a position in the center of the hub. When an insect flies into 

 the web it is completely wrapped up by a swathing band. 

 Like Epeira trifolium, this spider carries its prey up to the 

 retreat, where the soft parts are eaten and the chitinous parts 

 discarded. It wraps up any insect that chances to fly into the 

 web, so the food depends to a large extent on the location of the 

 web and the prevalence of any certain kind of insects. 



This spider matures the last of August and so has a com- 

 paratively short feeding period. It was more abundant both 

 at Crestline and at Columbus than Epeira trifolium, which 

 has about the same feeding period. I counted the number in 

 a woods of ten acres and noted eight hundred and ninety-six 

 individuals. Nowhere else did I find them so abundant as in 

 this one place. The woods was very thick and no stock of 

 any kind had ever been allowed in it, so this spider had free 

 range. Only 4% of this large number were found to be feeding 

 or to have anything in their webs. 



I counted them in other locations and found many of them 

 on small areas. A clump of berry bushes is another location 

 where one usually finds them in abundance. On one such clump 

 of berry bushes, which was ten by fifteen feet there were fifteen 

 of these spiders. In a grove of white ash trees on the edge of a 

 wood several of these spiders built their webs about fifteen feet 

 from the ground, and occasionally a web was suspended between 

 two of the trees. 



