HOWARD COUNTY, Md. — I bet you're wondering what I'm doing tramping through the woods in Elkridge — well, I'm looking for a spider that shouldn't be here. And it is unnaturally large.
WATCH: Maryland's newest invasive species: The giant Joro spider from Asia
Meet the Joro spider, a vibrant orb-weaver native to Africa and parts of Asia that was first spotted in the United States in Georgia in 2022. Thanks to iNaturalist, not long after, there was an unlikely spotting in this Elkridge neighborhood.
"The spider is like yellow and black in appearance and it has these silver stripes on its back. It makes a really large orb web, about like 18 inches in diameter, and the web has this really distinctive golden color to it, which is why its relatives and like all the spiders in that group are known as golden silk orb weavers," said Angela Chuang, associate professor at Washington College.
Chuang specializes in invasive species and arachnids and has been studying the Joro spider. She says this species is exhibiting classic characteristics of an invader.
"This is kind of like the very first example that's showing up that you know the species is exhibiting all these like classic characteristics of an invader where it moves in, it grows rapidly in population like very, very quickly," Chuang said.
"We don't have a good sense of like, what invasive spiders are capable of doing," she said.
Chuang is asking for your help to track the spread of these spiders because they could be showing up in a neighborhood near you.
"The Maryland population is a new and distinct one from the incredibly large one in the Southeast. We are also seeing like isolated observations and so it seems like they are established in this neighborhood here in Elk Ridge, but you know we've seen a couple of random ones and it leads to a lot of questions of like whether or not they're just they're also in between but nobody's reported them or if they're just kind of like randomly getting dispersed," Chuang said.
Her team conducted a modeling study that revealed surprising results about where these spiders might thrive.
"We did a modeling study where we looked at occurrences of these spiders in their native range in East Asia and then we extracted the environmental variables and projected it to North America to basically tell us what parts of North America have climates that are most similar to their native range. To our surprise, like where where they are incredibly abundant and successful in the Southeast is not even like a very high match. In fact, there's a much higher matchup in the Northeast and kind of around the Great Lakes," Chuang said.
But Chuang says there's no cause for concern. While the spider is venomous, a recent study by her team has shown it has little to no impact on people.
"We found in a study of like 20 people ranging from about 18 to kind of in their later 60s that nobody had a strong adverse effect to being bitten by joro spiders and so it was no worse than like some sort of other like insect bite per se," Chuang said.
Chuang says follow your heart — or your fear response — when it comes to squishing them.
For more information on how you can become a citizen scientist and help spot these invasive arachnids, visit WMAR2News.com.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
