ATLANTA — The Atlanta area has long been home to immigrants and residents looking for new homes, but in recent years, it’s not just people moving to the metro.
Instead, new residents of the Atlanta metro and other parts of Georgia include more exotic transplants, the Joro Spider, a brightly colored orb-weaver from Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan. They’ve been spreading through Georgia since arriving in 2013, according to UGA.
Now, the Bugwood Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health, part of UGA, is asking metro residents to send in pictures of the colorful arachnids as part of a new initiative, called Joro Watch.
As part of their photo contest, the Bugwood Center will send prizes to those with the most verified accurate reports of Joro spiders, for those in counties with the most verified reports, and for the first verified reports in each county.
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Reports by the University of Georgia previously noted the spiders’ spread through parts of the Southeast United States, saying that the species was technically invasive but potentially beneficial.
Not only are the spiders colorful, but they have a novel way of flying in.
While all spiders crawl and weave webs, the Joro spider is known to travel by weaving parachutes out of silk and flying along the wind, in a process known as ballooning, according to UGA.
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UGA has continued to study the Joro spider in the years since its arrival in Georgia.
According to the most recent publication, while the spiders are large and brightly colored with a yellow, blue-black and red pattern, they’re not aggressive.
The Joro Watch site has a map showing where the colorful critters have been reported across Georgia.
The Joro spider can grow as large as three inches, or about the size of a human hand, and as an orb-weaver, creates large webs, sometimes up to three feet wide.
While studying the Joro’s behavior, UGA found the spiders are not just gentle, but shy.
Researchers from the university have studied their behavior since at least 2021. The latest publication showed that the spiders are possibly “the shyest spider ever documented.”
“One of the ways that people think this spider could be affecting other species is that it’s aggressive and out-competing all the other native spiders,” Andy Davis, lead author of the study and a research scientist in UGA’s Odum School of Ecology, said. “So we wanted to get to know the personality of these spiders and see if they’re capable of being that aggressive.”
The university said the spiders build their webs between powerlines, on stoplights, and sometimes on gas station pumps. That means for anyone interested in participating in the Joro Watch contest, there are plenty of places to seek them out.
Anyone who spots a Joro can go to the Joro Watch website or make an account with EDDMapS on the phone application to report their spider sightings. The contest runs through October 15.
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