bbc.co.uk navigation

Garden spider with insect prey

Garden spider

The European garden spider with its poignant life cycle and familiar orb web is the most well known spider in the UK. Found in almost every country in the northern hemisphere, garden spiders feed on flying insects such as butterflies, wasps and flies but tend to ignore smaller prey such as greenflies. When a female has mated, her body becomes swollen with eggs. She builds a silken egg sac in which to lay the eggs and dedicates the rest of her life to protecting them. Unable to leave the eggs to hunt and feed, she dies in late autumn before her spiderlings hatch out in May of the following year.

Scientific name: Araneus diadematus

Rank: Species

Common names:

  • Cross spider,
  • Diadem spider,
  • European garden spider,
  • Garden orb-web spider

Watch video clips from past programmes (2 clips)

In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.

Distribution

The Garden spider can be found in a number of locations including: Europe, North America, United Kingdom, Wales, Ynys-hir nature reserve. Find out more about these places and what else lives there.

Habitats

The following habitats are found across the Garden spider distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.

Behaviours

Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.

Additional data source: Animal Diversity Web

About

The European garden spider, diadem spider, cross spider, or cross orbweaver (Araneus diadematus) is a common orb-weaver spider found in Europe and parts of North America,

Read more at Wikipedia

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.

Classification

  1. Life
  2. Animals
  3. Arthropods
  4. Arachnids
  5. Spiders
  6. Orb weavers
  7. Araneus
  8. Garden spider

Video collections

Take a trip through the natural world with our themed collections of video clips from the natural history archive.

  • Garden wildlife Garden wildlife

    From badgers to butterflies and frogs to foxes, garden wildlife is both varied and surprising.

  • Wild autumn Wild autumn

    Autumn - a time of great change, of breathtaking migrations, of high drama.

Elsewhere on the BBC

BBC © 2013 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.