RezonantVoid
Hollow Knight
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2018
- Messages
- 1,354
Anyone who has followed my media page knows about my obsession with the shiny little Arbanitis trapdoors. It's an interesting story, and after almost a year I feel it might be interesting to read.
I'm a builder's apprentice by trade, so I travel around to a lot of different environments fairly regularly. About mid February this year on one of the sites I went to I noticed a rather perculiar cluster of perfectly round silken burrows about 5cm about from each other.
Over about a week of lunch breaks spent under the hot sun I finally lured one of the the culprits out of their burrows and I was quite surprised to see a rather beautiful, golden spider.
This photo is of the mystery species of Arbanitis trapdoor spider. I ended up capturing this very specimen as the first of the 13. She has been doing great since then.
For the next 3 months of March, April and May I executed the first of 3 operations;
1. OPERATION: STEALTHY SNATCH
This involved carefully approaching the burrows with soft footsteps and tirelessly trying to lure them out during lunch breaks with a grass stalk. Once the head was completely out I used a builder punch to push through the soil and safely block the spider off and collect it without skewering it. I managed to do this successfully for 8 specimens out of the roughly 200 burrows.
After this I set out to try researching them. Being on a Jobsite meant that inevitably sooner or later they would be killed by one trade or another, most noteably concreters and landscapers. I found out that several Arbanitis sp. are listed as threatened but that noteably they stick to high disturbance industrial zones. So I set off to try and discover a male in order to breed them to help repopulate the area as all mine, and every single burrow, appeared to be female.
No matter where I looked, how many rocks, logs and dirt clods I overturned, I could not find a male. To add to my despair concretes dumped a massive pile of dirt bang snack on top of the colony after making a footpath, and the burrows seemed be exclusively located to this single site and the adjacent vacant block.
This problem fixed itself when 2 of my smaller specimens molted and turned into mature males.
Immediately, I moved onto the next step of my research, breeding, with flying success.
With a bit of idle activity while waiting for the wild ones to eventually burrow free, I ended up working on the vacant block next door, and had a new idea to lure them out as there were still plenty of wild survivors after the slab was poured.
2.OPERATION: POWER OF LOVE
Considering the females don't eat the males after breeding, I thought it would be a good idea to use one of my males to lure out the wild females. Unfortunately this quickly turned into OPERATION: POWER OF HUNGER when he was absolutely devoured on the first hole, much to my absolute dismay. Finally, stage 3...
3. OPERATION: ENDURING VICTORY
(Sorry, I'm a massive horizon zero dawn fan)
Finally, I decided that the fastest route was the direct route. I took up trowel and digging stick, and dug an extra 6 out of the ground, unfortunately between excavations a bobcat compacted about 5" of soil over the remaining 40 holes, and I physically cannot rescue that many. I did learn a few things though in the process.
*The rejectamenta chamber of all 6 holes were almost empty aside from the one that ate my male (rip buddy, you did a good job, even if your 600+ children will never know you).
*This explains why my male was eaten even in mid breeding season. All their abdomens were quite shriveled too.
*It shows their persistence on highly disturbed sites comes at the cost of their prey fleeing, and inevitable starvation.
But it's not all sad news, in this time I have already successfully raised 1 egg sack and given the slings to a breeding group to help get em back on track, i kept 1 sling though.
So in the end, here's to the lucky 13 that get to survive, and cheers to Cobalt, the male who sacrificed his life for science
Here's a few species notes I've taken:
1. Extremely hardy species, eats as little as 4 times per year, but insufficient for eggsack production.
2. Shiny, Iridescent bronze-gold colouring, especially the larger specimens.
3. Adapts to new setups within almost an hour and will take food nearly instantly even after just been captured.
4. Mildly venomous, minor symptoms may occur.
5. Absymal at climbing smooth surfaces.
6. Male may mate with up to 20 females before dying in the wild.
7. Burrow in extremely hardy, clumpy soil
Final step is to get my 6 gravid females to lay and release the slings back into the wild in a safe place.
Anyway, thought it might be interesting for some of you, it certainly has been for me!
I'm a builder's apprentice by trade, so I travel around to a lot of different environments fairly regularly. About mid February this year on one of the sites I went to I noticed a rather perculiar cluster of perfectly round silken burrows about 5cm about from each other.
Over about a week of lunch breaks spent under the hot sun I finally lured one of the the culprits out of their burrows and I was quite surprised to see a rather beautiful, golden spider.
This photo is of the mystery species of Arbanitis trapdoor spider. I ended up capturing this very specimen as the first of the 13. She has been doing great since then.
For the next 3 months of March, April and May I executed the first of 3 operations;
1. OPERATION: STEALTHY SNATCH
This involved carefully approaching the burrows with soft footsteps and tirelessly trying to lure them out during lunch breaks with a grass stalk. Once the head was completely out I used a builder punch to push through the soil and safely block the spider off and collect it without skewering it. I managed to do this successfully for 8 specimens out of the roughly 200 burrows.
After this I set out to try researching them. Being on a Jobsite meant that inevitably sooner or later they would be killed by one trade or another, most noteably concreters and landscapers. I found out that several Arbanitis sp. are listed as threatened but that noteably they stick to high disturbance industrial zones. So I set off to try and discover a male in order to breed them to help repopulate the area as all mine, and every single burrow, appeared to be female.
No matter where I looked, how many rocks, logs and dirt clods I overturned, I could not find a male. To add to my despair concretes dumped a massive pile of dirt bang snack on top of the colony after making a footpath, and the burrows seemed be exclusively located to this single site and the adjacent vacant block.
This problem fixed itself when 2 of my smaller specimens molted and turned into mature males.
Immediately, I moved onto the next step of my research, breeding, with flying success.
With a bit of idle activity while waiting for the wild ones to eventually burrow free, I ended up working on the vacant block next door, and had a new idea to lure them out as there were still plenty of wild survivors after the slab was poured.
2.OPERATION: POWER OF LOVE
Considering the females don't eat the males after breeding, I thought it would be a good idea to use one of my males to lure out the wild females. Unfortunately this quickly turned into OPERATION: POWER OF HUNGER when he was absolutely devoured on the first hole, much to my absolute dismay. Finally, stage 3...
3. OPERATION: ENDURING VICTORY
(Sorry, I'm a massive horizon zero dawn fan)
Finally, I decided that the fastest route was the direct route. I took up trowel and digging stick, and dug an extra 6 out of the ground, unfortunately between excavations a bobcat compacted about 5" of soil over the remaining 40 holes, and I physically cannot rescue that many. I did learn a few things though in the process.
*The rejectamenta chamber of all 6 holes were almost empty aside from the one that ate my male (rip buddy, you did a good job, even if your 600+ children will never know you).
*This explains why my male was eaten even in mid breeding season. All their abdomens were quite shriveled too.
*It shows their persistence on highly disturbed sites comes at the cost of their prey fleeing, and inevitable starvation.
But it's not all sad news, in this time I have already successfully raised 1 egg sack and given the slings to a breeding group to help get em back on track, i kept 1 sling though.
So in the end, here's to the lucky 13 that get to survive, and cheers to Cobalt, the male who sacrificed his life for science
Here's a few species notes I've taken:
1. Extremely hardy species, eats as little as 4 times per year, but insufficient for eggsack production.
2. Shiny, Iridescent bronze-gold colouring, especially the larger specimens.
3. Adapts to new setups within almost an hour and will take food nearly instantly even after just been captured.
4. Mildly venomous, minor symptoms may occur.
5. Absymal at climbing smooth surfaces.
6. Male may mate with up to 20 females before dying in the wild.
7. Burrow in extremely hardy, clumpy soil
Final step is to get my 6 gravid females to lay and release the slings back into the wild in a safe place.
Anyway, thought it might be interesting for some of you, it certainly has been for me!
