About two years ago, I wrote an article on a new pest we were seeing in Northeast Georgia named Trichonephila clavata: The East Asian Joro Spider. Since then, UGA and other organizations have invested a lot of time, energy, and research into better understanding this new pest as they have continued to spread and multiply. If you have some time between now and October 15th and want to get outside and enjoy the beautiful fall weather, UGA invites you to join the Joro Spider Spotting Contest.
The Joro Spider was first found in Georgia back in 2014 and confirmed genetically to be Trichonephila clavata in 2015. Since then, their populations and geographic range has continued to expand. The spiders are native to East Asian countries including Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan. The spiders mature in early September and die in November when temperatures drop. Female Joro spiders are typically around 1” in length and feature blue-black and yellow striped backs and red markings on their undersides. Males are smaller, with yellowish and brown coloration and striping. They are known for building large webs that can be inconvenient and a nuisance to property owners, but are not harmful to humans. One benefit to the Joro Spider is that they are a natural predator to brown marmorated stink bugs, an invasive species, and they serve as a food source for predators like wasps and birds. Interestingly, we cannot call the Joro Spider an invasive species quite yet, as “invasive” means the species has the potential to cause economic harm, environmental harm, or harm human health- and we don’t have scientific research documenting Joro Spider impact quite yet.
If you’re interested in helping scientists document the Joro Spider, you have a great opportunity to this week as part of the Joro Spider Spotting Contest. While you can report Joro Spider sightings at any time through jorowatch.org/report, the Spotting Contest gives a fun opportunity to win some neat prizes! The contest is open October 9-15th and is designed to promote Joro Spider reports in either the Joro Watch system or EDDMapS App. Prizes will be awarded to accounts with the most number of verified Joro spider reports, the most number of counties with verified Joro spider reports, and the first verified Joro spider report in the database for that county. If you’d like to participate, check out the Bugwood Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health Facebook page at: https://tinyurl.com/Joro2022 and the Joro Watch website at: https://jorowatch.org/.
