Stayed up way past my bedtime to see a female long-jawed orbweaver make her egg sac (and to confirm that those particular egg sacs I've been seeing *do* belong to them), AND saw a male, er, well, ejaculate and then charge his palps with sperm. Two things I've never seen before! Totally worth it!!
🧵👇
Long-jawed orbweaver (_Tetragnatha_) making her egg sac, a tufted ball suspended from three strong lines between walls of willow tree trunk.
I see these egg sacs all the time but was unsure who exactly was making them, so when I saw this _Tetragnatha_ laying down the three silk lines I decided to watch!
#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Tetragnathidae #SpiderBehaviour
On another tree I saw a courting male _Tetragnatha_ exuding a drop of semen onto a loose tangle of silk, then reach down and grab it with his pedipalps (the short appendages on either side of his jaws). In mature males, the palps are complex organs that are used kind of like turkey basters to inseminate females. I'd never seen this at all in any spider!!
Marked sensitive because, well, spider semen.
#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #SpiderSex #spiders #Araneae #Tetragnathidae #SpiderBehaviour
BTW, here's what a long-jawed orbweaver egg sac looks like when complete. (I had to go home before our gal upthread was completely finished with hers, but got a pic of this fresh one by a spider who was making hers at around the same time.)
#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Tetragnathidae #SpiderSilk
And here's why suspending egg sacs is a good idea. Two carpenter ants (_Camponotus_) voraciously tearing apart a different kind of spider egg sac, a ball of reddish silk fixed to substrate (in this case, tree bark, but I've also seen them on rocks). Not sure what species makes these.
Put together a video of the long-jawed orbweaver making her egg sac! https://youtu.be/Ntymw7nCpuI
It's a mix of still photos and video segments, and much of the video is kind of repetitive, so see the timestamps in the description or use YT's chapter feature to skip ahead if you like. Or watch the whole thing for the immersive experience, I guess.
#DailySpiderVid #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #SpiderBehaviour #Araneae #Tetragnathidae
neville park
Jeramee
Colin Purrington