Finally cracked the mystery.
The spider is Nuctenea umbratica, a.k.a. orb-weaver spider
With the help of my father, I caught the spider in a glass jar and took the following photograph:
Although, as per the info in wikipedia link, its distribution is not in Punjab. Its distribution is as follows:
Woww…this is amazing!!
But are you sure this is exactly what you think?
I work on fruit flies…
We are concentrating on a particular species for our objective i.e. Drosophila melanogaster
When we do the identification of fruit flies…we do the taxonomical classification…
You arent looking for a particular species…
But there might be some species of these spiders which would look almost the same…but differ in some characteristics…
I might not be right.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Just wanted to ask whether this is for sure what you think it is?
Isn’t taxonomical classification necessary here?
What do we understand by taxonomical classification?
Taxonomical classification
Taxonomy is the area or branch where organisms are identified on the basis of classification
So the classification here is
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species
This is how the taxonomical classification is done!
This is how we identify fruit flies as belonging to different species…below is the link given to the blog that was made for identification of fruit flies
Mam,
I think I could be wrong. It was wrong not to follow the procedure.
I was not aware of the process as I have not studied it in my books.
I used Google Lens to identify these. this could be a mistake because there were many results and I used the ones I found close.
In case of the last spider there were the following observations which made me think that it was an orb-weaver spider.
I think I could be wrong.
Yes, it is very necessary.
Yes. I saw two same looking snakes on Discovery channel. One was dangerous but the other was not. One was coral snake (red and yellow kill a fellow), the other was some harmless snake (red and black venom lack).
It is also possible that it could be a similar looking spider. My conclusion may be wrong. But I don’t want to kill the spiders to study them.
I will learn about it and follow the correct method.
Of course you can study them alive.
How big is this spider…
I can see that you can take pictures easily of this spider inside the glass jar.
What do we need for identification of your spider?
What do you think? @Pritika
So what is your plan?
How would you like to proceed further with this identification?
What is your objective? What is so special about this spider?
Or are you identifying it just because you found it!?
Ohh Ohh…
Are there enough pictures for its identification?
Can you upload the pictures here?
That’s some good discussion going on.
Just like the expansion of CUBE - Collaboratively Understanding Biology Education.
That’s how, I believe, things should be learnt. She might not have read taxonomical classification in her textbooks, but then why learning should only be limited to text books. Why should someone else framing curriculum decide what we should learn and what we want to learn?
Why should she wait to reach a particular class to learn?
This is the true spirit of CUBE. Hats off to the creator of this learning platform. With a mentor like @Lydia , @Pritika would definitely learn new things, explore new things, learn to follow the scientific principles, reach a conclusion in a logical manner and that’s what education is all about.
Godspeed!
Yes sir,
We all are learning…
No age restrictions for learning.
A school kid can also learn taxonomy without any difficulty.
When we were having our CUBE summer workshop in the year 2018, we had school kids also joining us in whatever we were doing.
Those kids are very excited in doing all these trapping, catching, fetching for all that interests them!!
I’ll tell about my experience with these kids.
I had some 8th std students along with me for the fruit fly works.
He learned how to trap fruit flies!
It isn’t that difficult when we actually do it.
But outsiders would think…how can we trap fruit flies?
If you ask those 8th std students, they will say
Take a dry plastic bottle, and some banana peels with some cotton plug or anything to close the bottle.
Thats all!
They also know the classification…how do we identify an organism…
When you ask them how will you identify an organism…
They will start from
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
So as Sir said, we can learn things without looking at our textbooks…
Very true!!!
Collaborative understanding!!
So @Pritika
As you have these photos…let’s see if it would help us in identification.
We’ll go step by step…
What say @Pritika
In this way, you will learn the so called “Taxonomical Classification”
This will be a context for your curriculum as well
I’ll start by giving you an example which would make it simpler for you…
This above classification is done for identifying a particular species (Drosophila melanogaster) of a fruit fly…
All these classifications will go step by step…
Which species are you focussing on @Pritika?
Great archives!
Let us start identifying our Spidey and see where it takes us alongside grabbing some references!
And also, as @Lydia mentioned, it would be like getting a Context, for our Curriculum!
So, for that, we need to start from the basics!
By basics, I mean that classifying our organism right from the start! Starting with the Kingdom of it!
Collaboration is the key here!
Instead of a single brain with 100 Billion Neurons, let’s power up more than 100 Billion Neurons!
I used Google Lens and there were some suggestions. But I suppose the insect is Batocera rufomaculata. But, a question arises in my mind. According to the information on Wikipedia, it is parasitically infected by Avetianella batocera. That means is it a dangerous one?
One of the issues that we all face seems to be the quality of photographs. An common person doesn’t have DSLR camera and the the normal mobiles are not capable of taking good pictures in the dark. And most of the enchanting insects come out only after dark.
Sometimes we are afraid of going near the insects.
@Venkat
Its inspiring to see other enthusiasts take part in the discussion and share their findings.
Good learning.
Are you sure???
What are the diagnostic features for identifying this Batocera rufomaculata?
Features which you can easily look at and identify it as this species…
Actually, there are some things I wish to mention. I live in a apartment. We barely have some plants in the pots only. This insect is definitely a beetle with large horns as we can conclude that from the images. I saw it in the balcony and taken a snap of it. This beetle needs a tree. There are no large trees or normal trees in the neighborhood of my place except at second house next house my place. The second house next to my house has large mango tree and the insect that I have taken picture was found on that side in the direction of large mango tree. The insect seems not interested in our place. It moved on the walls and in the direction of mango tree. I am sure that the family that insect belongs to it is Cerambycedia.
And the subfamily will be lamiinae. As I checked some information on 10 subfamilies of Cerambycedia.
And the reason it was on the outside of balcony is because it is accidental invader.
There are like 750 genera belong to lamiinae. So, if I go with like with the information I got with Google Lens, the suggestions I got belong to Batocera. There are around 63
species belong to Batocera and the species that belong to Batocera can be found in North India, Northeast India and East India. But my place belongs to South India. So, I am back to one thing that this insect does not belong to Batocera and this insect belongs to Cerambycedia but not sure about subfamily also now. I have to get some more information.
I suppose now that this insect may be Hoplocerambyx spinnix because the image I found on this below web page reminds me of the one that I have taken. The image and my pic also seems somewhat matching.
How did you find this out?
I mean, like how did you get to know that this beetle needs a tree??
