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Today I saw this curious colorful spider on its web near a sapota tree in my garden. I have never seen any spider like this,its around 2cm or a little less.

The most curious part is this part of its exoskeleton which looks like when a moth rests.Like a cape.

top side

here's the underside and the yellow patterned legs. bottom side

But the spider was bothered by my presence and was trying to crawl away,and I took this angled shot:

angled pic

I live in South India.

So what is this spider ?

Is there any advantage of the wing like part?

Links to websites with details of the spider are also appreciated.

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That’s maybe an oriental spiny orbweaver (Gasteracantha geminata), according to its appearance and location. You can find many more observations of such spiders on iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/207992-Gasteracantha-geminata?locale=en-GB

However, I don’t know what advantage there is to the “spines”. They are not the only species. There’s a whole genus of them with at least 70 known species, according to Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiny_orb-weaver

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