I went home to Athens this past weekend to chill out for my birthday. While walking around my parents' yard, my attention very soon was drawn to spiders. There seemed to be a thick web between every bush and tree (full disclosure, my parents' yard is very bushy). All the spiders had yellow and black patterning, and a few I recognized as the garden spiders I’ve seen every summer since childhood. But so many were thinner, had red dots, and often a second, smaller spider in their web. These were Joro spiders (Trichonephila clavata), part of the golden orb-web genus.
Joro spiders are commonly found in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, but around 2015 they arrived in northeast Georgia, likely in shipping containers (Amazon has a large distribution center in Jefferson, GA near I-85). Joros spin large, multi-dimensional webs from a golden fiber and often hang out in pairs or small groups. Females are larger and have more obvious colors than the males. As of today, these spiders have spread across northeast Georgia and have been reported in both the Carolinas. And they’re all over our yard.
You may be wondering why I'm talking about spiders on an urban foraging website-- well, I’ll tell you. Joro spiders, like any invasive species, are symptomatic of the (exponentially?) increasing upset to local ecologies--brought about to a large degree by human activity. Take kudzu (Pueraria montana), a climbing, coiling, perennial vine, also native to Asia, infamous in the southeast for choking out local plants. Invasive species are scary for many reasons, but to me the most unsettling is that we have no way of knowing what their long term impact might be. What will happen to the run of the mill garden spiders if all the prime web real estate is taken up by Joros? What will happen to local insect populations?
I realize this might be sounding a bit xenophobic, which isn’t my intention. But before globalization intensified, a spider species from Asia would have had virtually no opportunity to arrive in North America, let alone in good enough condition for invasion. We (humans) have paid less and less attention to the impact we have on populations and ecology around us, and the consequences of that inattention are becoming clearer.
But what better way to start paying attention to the world around you than by looking for tasty and nutritional treats? This is my favorite part of urban (or suburban) foraging; you just wander around looking at plants, touching them, eating them if you’re lucky. At this point, there’s not much we can do as individuals to stop international shipping, massive amounts of pollution, or global capitalism. If the doomsday predictions are true, we may be facing an apocalyptic wasteland in 40 years or so, so learning to identify edible fruits and nuts now might be a valuable skill.
Sources
https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2020/10/25/meet-your-new-georgia-neighbor-joro-spider-asian-invader-big-as-hand/114486538/
https://news.uga.edu/first-north-american-record-east-asian-joro-spider-0315/
https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/education/joro-spiders-invasive-species-japan-are-here-stay/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/