Bolas Spider

The bolas spider, Mastophora hutchinsoni, is an orb-weaver spider found in temperate parts of North America from Minnesota to New Hampshire, living in shrubs and short trees where adult females deposit their egg sacs. Females carry a large, whitish, patterned spherical abdomen, while the much smaller males are slender and reddish-brown. Rather than spinning a typical web, adult females mimic the sex pheromones of female moths to lure male moths within range, then capture them with a single sticky globule on the end of a silk line, swung like a bolas, a specialized technique thought to be more effective than a web at holding onto scale-covered moths; males and juveniles instead ambush small flies in a more conventional manner.