Halloween is almost here, but one creepy crawler has already marked its return in mass to northeast Georgia: the non-native Joro spider.
Richard Hoebeke, the associate curator of the arthropod collection of the Georgia Museum of Natural History at the University of Georgia, said the spider was first discovered in North America in Sept. 2014, after a man living in Colbert, Georgia reported a sighting of a strange spider.
“It didn’t take too long to figure out it was the Joro spider from Southeast Asia,” Hoebeke said. “So essentially Japan, China, the Koreas and Taiwan.”
After a local news source posted an article online about the spider, Hoebeke said he received numerous emails from people claiming they had sighted the spider, with many of them being spotted in Braselton and Hoschton.
Hoebeke said since 2014, the Joro spider has now spread to most of northeast Georgia.
“Even since last year, everybody has been noting in their emails they’re now seeing hundreds of these things around their properties,” Hoebeke said. “Anywhere there’s an open area, along the edge of a cultivated area with some wooded area or weeds, you’re going to start to see the webs.”
The Joro spider is hard to miss, due to its bright coloration and size. Hoebeke said they have a very vivid, bright yellow abdomen, with blue and green stripes. The sides of the abdomen have a pattern consisting of black lines, as well as some red coloration.
The Joro spider’s legs are black, with yellow, orange banding on them.
“I’ve been seeing a few of the adults already that probably extend as much as two and a half, three inches in length,” Hoebeke said. “It’s a very large spider.”
While Hoebeke said the spiders can bite, he would not necessarily call them poisonous.
“I’ve heard of a few instances where individuals have been bitten and the bite has caused raised swelling areas on the surface of the skin, sometimes associated with a fever, sometimes associated with just lethargy,” Hoebeke said.
The severity of the bite may depend on an individual’s immune system, according to Hoebeke. Either way, he said the Joro spider is far more likely to run away when approached by someone.
Even though the Joro spider is non-native to North America, Hoebeke said he believes they have a lot of benefits to our ecosystem.
“I consider them beneficial because they do feed on the insects that many of us consider to be pest insects, so mosquitoes, flies and stink bugs,” Hoebeke said.
Hoebeke said he has received reports from citizens claiming that the Joro spider may be out-competing native orb-weaving spiders, however, he has not witnessed this personally.
Many people have asked Hoebeke whether they should kill the Joro spider due to its non-native status, however, he believes it is not worth the time and effort.
“They’re part of the natural environment, now they’re becoming naturalized, they’re going to be commonplace,” Hoebeke said. “Killing them is not going to change the fact that the spiders are still going to be here.”
