Northern Jewelled Spider
Gasteracantha fornicata
Arachnidstrong against insects, birds
Common
While active with another arachnid in play, its target loses 4 HP at the start of each of its turns, as long as it stays active (7 with two others).
Gasteracantha fornicata
Photo: © Kai Squires (original photo) · CC BY 4.0 (licence text) · cropped
Strong against: it deals 20% more damage to them. Weak against: these types deal 20% more damage to it.
Gasteracantha fornicata (northern jewelled spider) is a species of spiny orb-weavers (family Araneidae) found in Queensland Australia. It is similar in shape to Austracantha minax which was originally described as Gasteracantha minax. It was described by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1775, the first Australian species of spider to be named and classified.
One of the synonyms of the species is Gasteracantha vittata, a name given to it by Ludwig Carl Christian Koch in 1871. However, it was later discovered that Fabricius had described the species earlier, and according to taxonomic rules, the earlier name has precedence and is the only one that should be used. Also, there are other species that were identified G. vittata at times, namely Gasteracantha irradiata (by Thorell, 1859), Gasteracantha sanguinolenta (by Keyserling, 1877) and Gasteracantha transversa (as subspecies G. v. longicornis by Strand, 1907), further complicating the issue.
G. fornicata is known for its female spiders that have a stark banded pattern along its dorsal side, with yellow or white stripes contrasting its dark-coloured body. It has small yellow or white spots along the ventral side. This spider has been described as a "sit-and-wait" predator, where it waits for small insects to approach its web. Gasteracantha fornicata is known for its circular, "orb-shaped" webs with silk tuft decorations.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Gasteracantha fornicata, by its authors, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
No global status on the IUCN Red List: that’s what makes this card Common.
Every Common card has 100 points, shared between HP, ATK and DEF:
How they’re shared out:
…
DEF 27