A Dubious Discourse about Arachnids

A giant Wood Orb Web Spider  — Nuctenea

 I found this video while I was studying Spiderology with a good friend and mentor  Dr A. from Hampton University.

Her only comment was that Grad Students have entirely too much time on their hands !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK-g8YKyOkk

Snippets From Spinnerets

Exerts from An Annual Christmas Poem and  Slugs,Spider Tales,and a Fish Called Bitterling from my “A Born Naturalist ” series.

Wolf Spiders:

Shelob with her babies

Lobo and Shelob have their eggs in a silken globe.

When their young come in hatches

The toys will  surely  come in batches

 Black Widow Spider:

Black Widow is accused of eating her mates

But her silken letter simply states:

“To be guilty of Husbandcide is a bunch of lies”

And proceeds to ask for Blue Bottle Flies.

The following exert is by Ms Kelsey Abbott, MS, Marine Biology, it is taken from her blog: https://maukamakai.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/word- of- the- day-apopohallation/

The term apopolallation seems to refer to slugs specifically, but they’re not the only animals to deliberately amputate the male sexual organs. Orb-web Spiders (Nephilengys malabarensis) also dabble in a little Bobbitism-and in their case, it is a life saving maneuver.

Orb Web Spider – Nephilengys malabarensis

Male Orb-web spiders, much like most males in the animal kingdom, want to produce as many offspring as possible. To do this, the male will have to mate with a female ord-web spider – and that’s not as pleasant as it sounds (for the male). The mating is short and when the female wants to end the copulatory event, she will start to eat her mate. BUT if the male detaches himself from his palp( the spider equivalent of a penis), he can dash out of the female’s reach while his palp remains in his mate’s genital opening. By turning himself into an enuch, the dude not only saves himself, but maximizes his paternity.

You’d think that once he ditched his palp the mating would be over, but it’s not. The palp continues depositing sperm while he is running away. In fact this process (known as remote copulation)results in greater sperm transfer and therefore greater offspring production.

Eunuch-izing himself gives the male some other advantages as well. The abandoned palp plugs the female’s genital opening, thus discouraging other males from mating and minimizing sperm competition.The female can remove the palp,however, making this roadblock technique only about 75% successful. Of course to attempt to mate with the female, an intact male would need to get to her- and with an eunuch guarding her web (from a safe distance), this is difficult task. In lopping off his palp the wimpy( but crafty) male transforms himself into an aggressive equivalent of the “Hulk” who attacks any male who dares step into his Lady’s web.He may be palp-less but he is alive and those babies will be all his.

Another Orb Spider- Golden Garden Spider – Argiope aurantia sitting on its stabilimentum

Yours in Spiderology,

Dubious Ramblin Clyde