Same. If they scrunch up and hide somewhere I wait, if they're exploring and laying web I offer food.I feed same or next day, if I feel the spider will take it. After a while it's easy to tell which spiders are "freaked out" to the point where they won't take food. Obviously, with those, I wait a couple of days until they've appropriated their hide/burrow.
---------- Post added 03-02-2012 at 12:53 PM ----------
Hmm, that is an interesting idea- does the "victory dance" over dinner induce further web production? It would be hard to control though- I've had sets of slings that will act differently from the get go and never change. Half burrow/web, the other never even dig, often carrying through into adulthood. I guess "personality" of each individual might have something to do with it too which is of course very difficult to predict/control. Maybe you could use all slings of the same clutch that are already exhibiting the same behaviors and then re-house feed/don't feed. Would also have to compare to a random sample with both habits I suspect to make sure it isn't just noise since there are a number of other factors that could sway the mood of the slings at the time of rehousing and may not be uniform across the sample set, such as proximity to molt, etc. Sounds like a reasonable hypothesis, would be a neat experiment.Well we know that most of the time, when they do their little 'food dance', they also tend to lay webbing. Does this kick-start their drive to begin remodeling and making themselves at home? I have no idea.
It would be interesting to run a controlled experiment or two - take ten individuals (slings), rehouse them in identical setups, and offer food to half of them.