Entomologist Alex Harman pulled out a small glass jar in one of the non-public rooms at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Inside the jar was a spindly spider, preserved in ethanol.
"Its body is — when it's alive — yellow with gray bands, explained Harman. "Those gray bands have since faded. The legs have striking bands on them. So it's got like a repeating black and yellow pattern on its legs."
It's a Joro spider, and it resembles a wasp. But unlike the latter, Joro spiders are considered harmless, as Harman confirmed.
"They're harmless to humans, harmless to pets. They're just a big, kind of scary-looking spider. A bit larger than ping pong ball-sized. If you had it and its legs were all spread out, it would be about the size of a dollar bill in span and length," he said.
"They're found throughout southeastern Asia, Indonesia, and parts of China," added Harman, who serves as Schlinger Chair of Entomology at the museum.
However, this Joro Spider was spotted lurking in the landscaping at a local Santa Barbara business. It was identified and captured.
How did it get to coastal California?
"There's a lot of international movement of fruits, vegetables, flowers, house plants, and all sorts of things (that) get moved from country to country, and sometimes there's insects or spiders on those," Harman explained. "This was probably an accidental introduction of a spider or an egg sack of a spider that was just on someone's plant that they imported, then it got loose."
The discovery marks the first time a Joro Spider has been reported west of America's Great Plains, and Harman said it’s unlikely the specimen in the jar is a Lone Ranger.
"We don't know for sure (where it originated). Since I have it preserved in ethanol, if there's anyone who wants to do genetic work eventually to see if it's a novel introduction or part of the introduced population, they could. It's a lot easier for things to move across state lines than it is to come into the United States, because — even though things do get in occasionally — we have quarantines. The USDA has procedures in place to intercept insects and spiders that are coming in on vegetation and on produce. And so it's a lot easier for things to move across state lines than it is to get into the US," he said.
"Hopefully, it's the only one that came in this time. When she was collected, she wasn't gravid, so she wasn't full of eggs; she hadn't mated. We checked around the area, and we could find no others. We didn't find any males in her web, and so we think she came alone.
The spider is not on public display, but Harman said that could happen in the future.
In the meantime, you can see photos right here.
On the web.
