Image: The Museum solicits information and photographs on the Joro Spider (Trichonephila clavata). Please send emails with photographs and locality information to this address-- ugajoro@gmail.com. The museum is curating the hundreds of records sent to us since we published the initial discovery article in 2015. The Joro Spider is now a commonly seen large spider across northeast Georgia. We suggest that the Joro has been present in the Braselton, Georgia area since 2010, and now in 2022 the range as evidenced by records submitted to the museum and recorded on iNaturalist extends into extreme southern Tennessee and northwest South Carolina. Dispersal via ballooning and vehicle hitchhiking has a facilitated this range expansion. Hoebeke ER, Huffmaster W, Freeman BJ. 2015. Nephila clavata L Koch, the Joro Spider of East Asia, newly recorded from North America (Araneae: Nephilidae)PeerJ 3:e763 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.763 Type of News/Audience: Museum News
