What Does “A Colony of Spiders” Mean?

“Colony” is one of the more biologically meaningful collective nouns for spiders, because although the vast majority of species are strictly solitary, a small number of genuinely social spider species do exist. These species, found in parts of Africa, South America, and Asia, build and maintain shared communal webs, cooperate in prey capture, and even collectively raise young, real social structure that’s rare in the arachnid world.

Social spider colonies can grow surprisingly large, with some communal webs housing hundreds or even thousands of individuals working the same structure together, sharing prey caught in the collective web rather than competing for it. This is a sharp departure from the fiercely solitary, often cannibalistic behavior typical of most spider species, making “colony” a term that, for a select few species, is entirely earned rather than borrowed for effect.

Example: “A colony of social spiders had woven a web spanning nearly the entire tree, home to thousands of individuals working in concert.”

Related: Collective Nouns for Arachnids · What Is a Group of Spiders Called?