Argiope Aurantia

Argiope aurantia, the yellow garden spider, is an orb-weaving spider of the family Araneidae first described by Hippolyte Lucas in 1833, also known as the black and yellow garden spider, writing spider, or zigzag spider. It is common across the contiguous United States, Hawaii, southern Canada, Mexico, and Central America, ranging as far south as Colombia though less common in the Rocky Mountain basin and mountain areas. Females, at 19 to 28 millimeters in body length, are much larger than the 5 to 9 millimeter males, and the spider is marked by distinctive yellow and black abdominal markings and a mostly white cephalothorax; it builds a circular web up to two feet across in sunny open areas, typically with a zigzag band of silk called a stabilimentum across the center.