Friday 19 August 2011

Courting spiders

I have posted on this common garden species, Linyphia triangularis courtship before, but I had the chance of observing this pair of spiders courting in the garden yesterday and take some photos. The male is larger, reddish, with an elongated abdomen and very large chelicerae. The female, at the back, has a rounded abdomen with a black and white pattern. As you can see in the bottom photo, there is a recent moult hanging from the web - I presume is the female's, as I cannot see the large chelicers of the male. In this species, the male does a form of mate guarding, sharing the female's web to wait until she has moulted and therefore she is ready for mating, and fending other approaching males off. The male vibrated its pedipalps and abdomen and slowly approached the female.

1 comment:

Milan Rezac said...

Hello Africa,
Some weeks ago I asked you for a photo for an Atlas of Spiders of the Czech Republic. Now I am looking for the photos for the popularizing paper about the spider Linyphia triangularis to a Czech naturalistic magazine Ziva. And again I found your wolnderful photo of male guarding a female. Would it be possible to use it?
Of course, you would be stated as an author of the photo. Do you have the photo in higher resolution? Do you have other photos of this species?
Thank you very much in advance for consideration my request.
Best wishes!
Milan Rezac, e-mail address: rezac@vurv.cz