Aphonopelma sp.

balam · Aphonopelma sp.

Ok, this is the T formerly known as Aphonopelma sp. "Bakersfield rust"
Part of one of the SCABIES breeding projects, I will upload pics of the male later.

Female I

These are WC natives collected during our stop in Bakersfield. They are voracious eaters and pretty defensive, she has given me the raised butt stance more than once, though she has been manually picked up on occasion and she didn't follow through, at least until now.

the pictures don't really do it justice as she has some reddish on her abdomen, I'm sure they are quite a sight when recently molted.

Anyone else have pictures of theirs?

ftorres

Hello All,
Oscar, here are pics of my juvenile pair.

The boy

The girl

rosenkrieger

My girl:

She's fattened up quite a bit. these photos are old. I'll get some newer shots of her soon

I don't have any pics of the boy yet. I'll see about uploading some tomorrow.

balam

Trying to get away...

Young female...

Ronin

Nice Oscar. Gotta love the local Ts.

rosenkrieger

So, I think that girl I posted above might be gravid.... She's taken maybe 6 roaches in the 3 month's i've had her, and none in the last month, yet she's starting to baloon and excavate her cage majorly.

Which brings me to this question:
If she is gravid, are these a dwarf species of aphonopelma, or is she just a runt? Not that I think about it, she's probably a runt. I've caught full size mature males up there... Unless there is more than one species running around here and their size generally keeps them from cross breeding.

What

Looks like a T getting ready to molt to me... But gl either way.

rosenkrieger

She's behaving almost exactly like the last gravid T I had, Either way will be good. ::lol::

Matt Kogler

Look at that badunkadunk booty!!! Thats a trunk that would make that rapper jealous...

Heks

from what it looks ive got a ton of these same sp. from the perris ca. area... if you need a male or 4 and or females let me know... ive got more than i really want... everyone in the neighborhood brings me t,s that they find... its kind of crazy

WBurke17

Those were caught in Bakersfield, so they might not be the same species..

ftorres

Hello,
They can also be a subspecie, you never know how this thing works.

Heks

i figured the same.. just throwing the idea out... i still have to many... if anyone wants any let me know

balam

Ronin

I'd be weary to release Ts back into the wild if it's been in someone's care for a bit (new parasites/pathogens, etc.). caco is the man to talk to about possible negative effects of pet Ts/inverts being released back into their natural habitat.

cacoseraph

definitely do not release them!

afaik there are no endangered species in CA so you would be putting local populations at risk for no good reason

there are studies on spiders done that indicate some species are infected with certain very life altering bacteria (Rickettsia sp.) up to 94% of the time (depending on what population was studied). iirc, no population was found to be completely infection free... so it is almost guaranteed that if you have other species in collection that you have at least one spider that is infect... granted not all infections are *that* harmful, but some are just crazy and really can mess up reproduction!

it is admirable to want to help out nature, but the biggest risk to nature is randomly releasing things back into it!

balam

wow. So once you collect anything you've pretty much given it a life-in-an-enclosure sentence? That actually puts it in a new perspective for me. I was not aware of that and m glad I've learned it.

There must be way to catch, keep an release without endangering populations...

What

rosenkrieger

cacoseraph

i'm not sure if i could write release protocols in good conscience... it seems like there just isn't enough info out there to know if all bases are covered

but a low level clean room would be a start, yes

rosenkrieger

Well, my girl pictured above finally molted. She looks like a completely different spider:

Steven

A clean room without other species/feeders/substrate etc. Maybe another native from the same area and environmental needs... but otherwise...think as if you were working for a zoo's lab trying to replenish a species ...crazy amount of considerations ..nobodies perfect, but even lowish negative possibilities should be considered high priority.
Yet! chances be.. not much bad could happen. ...oh well, thars the rub i figure. Who wants to be the one that proudly announces an attempt and then gets known as the one that f***ed things up? Ha! yikes i say!

Matt Kogler

My god man, I want one of those!! Nice looking spider dude.

Steven

rosenkrieger

Yeah. If you guys want one, I can see about catching one next time I'm out there where I got this one

Steven

balam

I would definitely suggest to go the CB route (instead of collecting)... specially now that I hear this side of the coin. Even if the sp. is released back into the wil without any impact whatsoever to the environment (I'd say it has happened, no one has ever found out, and no impact has been made)... or not.

Plus, they are painstakingly slow-growing.

Either way, I have a large male ~4" LS and a ~3" female, both in premolt... that was the idea behind collecting these anyway, to be a SCABIES CB program... I would mind passing them on as soon as we can get them to mate and they give us a good sac... or two. Looking forward to rearing a native T for a good ~6 years or more.

The natives have really turned me on... Embarassed

that sounds funny but it's true, we have some really beautiful species of many lifeforms in California.

The female that died at the NHM was from this sp. as well, what a shame because she was the largest female I had.

Who else kept specimens of this sp. ???

What

There are at least 3 species in SoCal that all look essentially the same but with very different males... So if the females dont seem interested when you introduce them, prolly different species.

rosenkrieger

Kevin, we caught all of the specimens from one embankment within about a 10 foot radius. ::lol::. I've got this female, and then I've got a male about half her size. I'm hoping they mature around the same time.

What

And I collected one of my females, and two males from the same 50' x 50' area. Both of the males looked completely different from each other after maturing, one was jet black with bright red setae on the abdomen(and none on the legs), and one molted out brown with red/orange setae on it's legs but and abdomen. The only difference was one matured in August and one in October.

(And I have seen another type of MM in that same area that is just brown with no red setae. These are around from July to November.)

/me goes to see if he kept any of the pics of them...

Edit:
Also,

WBurke17

we collected I beleive 6 females and 1 or 2 males IIRC.
One going to Brent, I have one as does Frisco, Oscar had two females and the immature male and one went with Chase.

rosenkrieger

Warren, that sounds about right. I took the smallest male because he was a bit smaller than this girl that I already had.

balam

The male is on his back. His molt web is really heavy.
He was already on his back when I checked on them at 8:00 AM this morning.

I've been taking pictures, so i'll load them up later Wink

balam

Here we go:

The male was found on it's molt web at ~8:00 AM. He was observed to be in the same position and without further external development at ~12:00 noon.

At ~12:30ish He started to push off:

He turned out to have red/orange setae on legs and abdomen.

Smile

Ladies, get in line, 'cause there is a new man in town.

Celeste

Hubba, hubba!! ;-)

WBurke17

Did he hook out?

balam

Yup.

Got a large female?

WBurke17

Not sure how big the females get but it was as large as any of the others, gonna have to set up a date for them..

balam

Kevin,

Does this one look anything like any of the males you mentioned.

What

Yup, I still have no idea which males are the ones that go with the most typical type of "eutylenum" though...

In a couple weeks males with black bodies/legs with bright red setae on the abdomen should show up. Soo...It is prolly one of those two types, we just need to figure out what kind it is. Smile

(On another more frustrating note, the first native T I ever collected *still* hasnt molted... Been more than 2 yrs and 1 month.)

balam

I gotta tell you, when we collected these the vast majority were literally two-three steps from each other. I mean, this was funny to see. We step out of the truck and whoa, there was a burrow right there, two steps away from the driveway and five steps away from the street.
A trapdoor (californicum?) was within twelve inches from the second burrow that was uncovered, and another T burrow was within twelve inches of the trapdoor.
I would be incredibly surprised to find out they were different species.
The only other thing is that there were a couple of different generations... some really small and only a couple of larger females.