Agelenopsis sp.

balam · Agelenopsis sp.

Ok, so the Agelenopsis I keep has now mated.

Last week I introduced a male with full palps to the web. His abdomen was going all over the place as soon as he touched the web. (sometimes i theorize that there must be some kind of pheromone on some spiders' web which allows for easy identification within species and prevents becoming a meal, for the males that is)

He has now mounted her twice, but after many hours of looking online for anything on egg cases of Agelenopsis sp. or any other information on gravid spiders of this genus i came up empty handed.

Does anyone out there know or has some knowledge of ow long its going to take for her to lay her egg case? What does it look like?

Any precautions on rearing these guys?

Any help is appreciated.

balam

Well, I have now re-housed the male Agelenopsis.

I have found that the egg case is somewhat disc shaped but i have not seen pictures or read any further descriptions.

I've also read that the male usually dies soon after mating, and the female dies soon after depositing the egg case.

At this point i am just waiting to see what happens.

balam

EGG SAC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!
At first i was not sure if she was gravid, but i decided to remove the male.

I re-arranged the set-up just a bit, by providing a crevice in between a rock wall and the acrylic wall.

Last night I noticed some activity, she was laying silk on the rock wall, which led me to believe something had to be going on.

Sure enough, this morning she had finished the silk bed (disc shaped), it was a small area, roughly about half inch in diameter.

I just witnessed (took lots of pics) her laying the egg sac, which was a yellowish color, you could definitely see lots of little eggs in there.

The egg sac was about 3/16" to a 1/4" in size. (i compared it to the relative size of the female's leg span as she was working on it)

Ten she proceeded to enclose it in more silk.

Man, she is going to be tired! it's all abdominal movements, no wonder they have such a small waist!!!! ha ha

I'm prepared though in the sense that i know she will most likely die pretty soon.

One thing i do not know, (hoping to get some help with this one), is if i should remove the egg sac from the cage or if i should leave it. If i leave it it's going to be a mess trying to get al the sling as they will camouflage so well with the soil, branches and crevices.

I'm worried about hurting the eggs if i remove it though. She will also be fiercely guarding it as she no longer needs to eat, for her mission now is to continue her duty as a mother.

So, what do you guys think?
When would it be advisable to remove the sac, and should i just place it in a vial?

The slings will not eat right after being born, and i think i can always reduce the number of slings by letting them cannibalize with each other at the beginning.

Any help is appreciated.

Jules

I would recommend leaving it. The mom needs to turn it and you will find she carries it with her every where. That is if I'm thinking of the right spider. I'm more of a T girl! Anyway, our big girl would also still eat when she had her sac but I offered her smaller prey than I used to give her. Don't know if that's the norm but she ate. We got over excited and pulled the sac. It never hatched. If I had to do it again I would have left it with her. She eventually quit eating and dies within about 3 months later. Callie was a cool spider and we still have her in a small jar of alcohol!

I am no expert. This is just my one and only experience. Good luck! Wink

balam

Nice. I read (and experienced) that she would not eat for the remainder of her life.

In speaking with Johnny he mentioned Agelenopsis sp. would generally cover the egg sac with debris. At the we were having that conversation she had not done so yet. A couple of minutes later though, she started to gather little rocks and dried leaves and covering the egg sac.

I have left to the office now, but am excited to see what i find when i come back.

Smile

DeniseCasey

Very interesting information everyone. You are right, not alot of information out there.

I found old link on ATS-Maybe you can contact some of the individuals that have worked with this type of spider in the past for further questions or research.

http://www.atshq.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1968

good luck and keep us posted! Very Happy

Johnny

She will continue to eat. But Ive had other species who've just kicked it after labor, like the Olios which I wanted around a bit longer.

balam

PICS ARE HERE!!!

Laying the sac:

Poor thing.

This was such a lengthy process.

balam

AH what happened to the pics?

Celeste

Looks like something wrong on the gallery.myff.org side... You need to check over there...

Jules

Jules

WOW! I just noticed the label on your spidey's tank. Very thorough! Is all your stuff labeled that way? I didn't see your spidey's call name on that label though. You better get that girl a name before Denise notices!! Very Happy

balam

Oh yeah!

I checked on her this morning and the egg case was still attached to the rock.

No babies in sight.

I actually released the male out into the yard yesterday morning.

I hope he lives the rest of his days in a happy manner.

Let's check on those pics.

Jules

balam

YAY !

Pics are back up.

Jules, regarding the labels:

I have a very limited collection, and would like to keep it labeled like that even if it grows.

There are a lot of people out there (I was one of them) who are very misinformed about arthropods (spiders and insects in particular), and having the labels there has allowed me to use them as conversation starters. This is because people will ask: "Oh, and what does araneomorphae mean? Then I can talk to them about true spiders and some basic differences.

This also allows me to have a visual reference as to what groups each individual belongs in.
I am no expert, as a matter of fact I am as far from it as could possibly be, but looking at the labels sparks a little more interest.

It was thanks to those labels that i started to get interested in the Theriidids, and wanted to learn more about them. Going from thinking that everything that looked like a Widow was a widow - to be able to understand that Steatodas are in the same family but are NOT Latrodectus was worth it all in itself.

Either way, right now I don't have any call names for them, I think it's easier to name a Tarantula due to the more direct contact you can have with the spider. I hardly handle my True spiders, and because of that don't develop a more direct attachment.

But in conclusion, yup, I would like to be able to maintain a methodical approach to labeling them.

(I also keep a log of molts and matings) Wink

balam

Second egg case deposited yesterday I think.
All covered now, but it seems like a bigger bump than the first one.
And I noticed the Spider cut the small "Spike" thread from the -old- case, and added that "spike" thread to the new egg case.

balam

I don't know about this girl anymore...
she layed yet another sac this morning. I guess the other two were not fertile. This is the third sac now, all from one male, two mating sesions.

balam

The third sac remains to be somewhat plump as compared to the other two.
Perhaps increasing the humidity was what was needed...

balam

One more sac was laid this morning. Humidity as been maintained around 60%, it seem none of the other three sacs were fertile.

Johnny was right though, she keeps on eating and taking care of the sacs.

balam

They finally hatched!!!!!!

they seem to have hatched early Sunday Morning, I counted about 60 in there. I have no idea which egg case they came from as I can't find any exit hole on any of the cases, and I don't want to rip the web open just to find out.

This means two things:

1) There may be 3 more egg cases waiting to hatch
2) Only the last egg case was fertile.

The first egg case was deposited on Dec 5, 08' ; if this is the one that hatched that would mean they were in that case for over 30 days!

If the sac that yielded slings was the last one deposited (on Jan 5) they hatched within one week- This sounds more like it to me-

So I guess I'm full of Agelenopsis Sp.

I would also like to find out what species she really is, I'm willing to wait 'till she passes in order to send it out to someone and ID it. (I'm keeping and raising some of these babies and would like to know their species for future reference)

They are teeny tiny, but I can tell their abdomen is an orange color on the top, does this help?

Thanks! Smile

(oh yeah, if anyone would like babies let me know... they are FREE) - you could always just walk outside your house and collect some yourself, but I figured I'd ask since I don't know what I'm going to do with all of them, I only plan to keep a few)