Male spiders are generally much smaller than females in their species, making them easy prey. The male has to signal to the female that it is a spider of the same species, not food or a potential predator, and that it intends to copulate.
This is courtship. Courtship varies considerably among different species. Many web-building spiders will use vibration as a means of courtship communication. The male may strum a unique signal on a thread connected to the female's web to identify itself and get across its intentions.
Many spiders with better eyesight, such as various wolf spiders and jumping spiders, will "dance" to court the female. Once the female recognizes the male's courtship behavior, she will position herself for sex, signaling to the male that she is receptive, or she will make it clear that she is not receptive by shaking her web, for example, or just crawling away.
If the male is desperate to mate, because all the females in the area will soon lay their eggs, he may proceed anyway, with full understanding that the female might kill him. Both the male and female reproductive organs are at the rear of the abdomen, but spiders don't mate by coupling these organs. Instead, the male deposits some sperm onto a small web and picks it up on the end of his pedipalps. When the female is in position, the male deposits the sperm in the female's genital opening.
The female stores the sperm in receptacles near the ovaries. When she is ready to lay her eggs, months down the road in some species, she uses the sperm to fertilize them. Some spiders may lay hundreds, even thousands of eggs in one shot. Once females lose their virginity, however, they change tack, fancying smaller, safer males to decrease their risk of getting eaten. Some female spiders will even eat their own offspring — perhaps for some. Other mothers have an extremely , such as Phyrynus marginemaculatus , a dime-sized, whip-spider species common in Florida.
The arachnids constantly stay in tactile contact with each other by caressing their young and snuggling together, it was found. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Politics Covid U.
News World Opinion Business. Share this —. Follow NBC News. The cocoon offers protection from cold, from desiccation and to some extent from predators and parasites. The downside is that some birds collect them to line their nests. Different species of spiders produce different amounts of eggs per cocoon. Also some spiders produce two or more cocoons in a year; and some such as tarantulas may live for many years producing young every year.
It is not possible, therefore, to state clearly what the reproductive effort of spiders in general is. Consider also, that the health and size of any individual female spider varies — and this also effects the number of eggs she can produce.
As a general rule larger spiders produce more eggs, but there are exceptions. Here are a few examples of spider eggs per cocoon, from England. The number of cocoons is based on the likely maximum in the wild, though more may be produced in captivity. Once a male spider is mature, he charges up his palps and sets out in charge of a mate.
His searching involves checking out areas of suitable habit; when close, pheromones and chemotactic responses ensure a female is the correct species. Male wolf spiders are known to recognise and follow the draglines of females. Also males often mature earlier than females because they are smaller and go through one or more less moults. In some cases, this allows the males time to find a female before she is mature. In such cases, he will often move in next door.
This not only ensures he will be there after she has gone through her final moult, but also gives her a chance to become accommodated to his presence to some extent.
The biggest problem many male spiders have is letting the female know that they are a mate and not dinner. This is initially done through courtship. As you can imagine, male spiders tend to approach the females cautiously until they they are convinced the female knows who they are and even then many of them like to have some insurance. Males spiders have evolved a wonderful array of habits to fulfill these two roles of Spider Courtship and Insurance. Well, I hope this page has given you an interesting introduction to spider reproduction and helped you understand a little about how spiders mate.
Your email address will not be published. Author Recent Posts. Gordon Ramel. Gordon is an ecologist with two degrees from Exeter University.
0コメント