Community setup - failure.

[BillieJean]

one word "Curiosity"............... they want to experience what it feels like to have a communal set up. The amusement on seeing how the Ts thrive and interact with one another.

If people want a communal setup they should keep scorpions or something else that is communal. IMHO Ts thrive when the only interaction they have with one another is during breeding.

 

[NevularScorpion]

If people want a communal setup they should keep scorpions or something else that is communal. IMHO Ts thrive when the only interaction they have with one another is during breeding.

Most of them do but some sp. like the chicken spider interact with one another in a regular basis. They hunt and share food with each other. Its a very interesting sp.

 

[Bill S]

Most of them do but some sp. like the chicken spider interact with one another in a regular basis. They hunt and share food with each other. Its a very interesting sp.

I've got a group of Holothele sp. Tachira living together. They've been together for about nine months, share the same hide, are often found together in a pile. Haven't seen them cooperatively hunt food or share it though. Holothele incei will share the same webs with each other. (I've got a group of immatures sharing a container and a web at the moment.) I've heard that some species of Heterothele will live together in colonies in the wild, and I've got some Heterothele villosella that I'm planning to start a communal or colonial set-up with once I get them big enough to breed. (I'll start the colony with a gravid female and let her raise a clutch.)

There are no doubt other species that can live together too, but the trick is finding out what conditions and circumstances they require. In some communal arthropods, if you introduce strangers to each other one is likely become a meal. Littermates may have better luck if they continue living together from hatching. If you separate them for a while and reintroduce them, you might have problems. Sometimes you can feed them heavily before introducing them and that greatly improves the chances of them accepting each other. This was the case with some communal centipedes I recently set up in a terrarium together.

 

[NevularScorpion]

I've got a group of Holothele sp. Tachira living together. They've been together for about nine months, share the same hide, are often found together in a pile. Haven't seen them cooperatively hunt food or share it though. Holothele incei will share the same webs with each other. (I've got a group of immatures sharing a container and a web at the moment.) I've heard that some species of Heterothele will live together in colonies in the wild, and I've got some Heterothele villosella that I'm planning to start a communal or colonial set-up with once I get them big enough to breed. (I'll start the colony with a gravid female and let her raise a clutch.)

There are no doubt other species that can live together too, but the trick is finding out what conditions and circumstances they require. In some communal arthropods, if you introduce strangers to each other one is likely become a meal. Littermates may have better luck if they continue living together from hatching. If you separate them for a while and reintroduce them, you might have problems. Sometimes you can feed them heavily before introducing them and that greatly improves the chances of them accepting each other. This was the case with some communal centipedes I recently set up in a terrarium together.

Great, I would like to see your communal set up you should make a documentary video every 5 months to keep track of them when you have time.

 

[KoriTamashii]

Thanks for posting. If other people post both successes and failures, along with details, I think we can all learn something from the experiments.

You mentioned that the vanished one was in pre-molt, so I assume it had not yet reached maturity. How close to maturity were all three of these? Any idea what the mix of males and females was? Those details might also be useful.

I'm not positive, though I believe there were two females and one male. I think the vanished one was the male. No clue how close to maturity any of them are.

 

[Bill S]

Great, I would like to see your communal set up you should make a documentary video every 5 months to keep track of them when you have time.

Someone already has a great series of pictures of a communal H. incei set-up. I used to have it bookmarked, but a computer glitch eliminated my bookmarks. Maybe someone here will know the site/pictures I'm referring to and be able to post the link. It was that set of pictures that inspired me to get some H. incei.

The Holothele sp Tachira set-up is pretty simple and straightforward. I had a bunch of them hatch out of a single egg sac, and I set them all up in a 29 gallon terrarium, and pretty much ignored them (other than to toss in crickets, keep the water bowl filled, and periodically moisten the substrate). They were in that set-up for about six months, at which time I decided to pull them out so I could use the tank for something else. The Tachira were usually hidden, so I didn't know how successful the experiment had been. But as I dug through the dead leaves I'd covered the substrate with I found that most of the spiders were still there and still doing fine. I transferred six of them to a small kritter keeper, where they remain. A handful of the others were set up in individual containers and will be kept for future breeding. The bulk of them were traded off at the ATS conference in July. The current group cage is a small kritter keeper with about an inch of coco fiber as a substrate and a hide made out of a piece of plastic tube (cut in half lengthwise). At any given time there are about four of them in the hide and a couple out wandering. It appears that they more often molt in individually webbed areas away from the hide.

The Heterothele are still quite small and individually housed. I just transferred them this morning from vials to deli cups. It will be some time before I can say much about them as a communal/colonial species.

There was a researcher who studied Heterothele gabonensis in Africa and posted pictures of them online - don't remember if it was on this forum or on the ATS forum (probably the ATS). A search of both sites may turn up his postings. He found them living not actually communally (as far as I remember) but with many in close proximity to each other.

 

[Anubis77]

I've got a group of Holothele sp. Tachira living together. They've been together for about nine months, share the same hide, are often found together in a pile. Haven't seen them cooperatively hunt food or share it though. Holothele incei will share the same webs with each other. (I've got a group of immatures sharing a container and a web at the moment.) I've heard that some species of Heterothele will live together in colonies in the wild, and I've got some Heterothele villosella that I'm planning to start a communal or colonial set-up with once I get them big enough to breed. (I'll start the colony with a gravid female and let her raise a clutch.)

Most of what I read on Holothele sp. "Tachira" seem to show that they aren't like H. incei. Yours is the first description of them as a potentially tolerant species that I've come across.

All of those red and black, spindly-legged Holothele species look really dissimilar to H. incei though.

Someone already has a great series of pictures of a communal H. incei set-up. I used to have it bookmarked, but a computer glitch eliminated my bookmarks. Maybe someone here will know the site/pictures I'm referring to and be able to post the link. It was that set of pictures that inspired me to get some H. incei.

This?

http://www.arachnofreaks.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3325

 

[Bill S]

Anubis beat me to it. I did a search for the link, found it, came back here to post it only to see that Anubis had already posted it.

Holothele sp Tachira is, as far as I'm concerned, still a question mark. The group I have has not yet reached sexual maturity. When that happens, we'll really see how communal they are. I do know that if you take a group, separate the members for a while and then put them back with each other, somebody will get eaten. The same thing has been observed in some species of non-tarantula spiders - apparently there is a "group member vs outsider" issue. Once an animal has lost its group status there may be difficulties in regaining it.

 

[Anubis77]

Anubis beat me to it. I did a search for the link, found it, came back here to post it only to see that Anubis had already posted it.

Holothele sp Tachira is, as far as I'm concerned, still a question mark. The group I have has not yet reached sexual maturity. When that happens, we'll really see how communal they are. I do know that if you take a group, separate the members for a while and then put them back with each other, somebody will get eaten. The same thing has been observed in some species of non-tarantula spiders - apparently there is a "group member vs outsider" issue. Once an animal has lost its group status there may be difficulties in regaining it.

I had something like that in my mind when I decided to separate my vials of Holothele sp. "Tachira" and Poecilotheria pederseni, but wasn't sure if it was reported to happen or not. Well, I guess I won't be putting them back together now. Regardless, it's interesting. Thanks for that.

 

[Bill S]

Anubis - I remember your table full of spiders you won at the ATS conference. Those Holothele sp Tachira are ones I donated to the raffle.

 

[Anubis77]

Anubis - I remember your table full of spiders you won at the ATS conference. Those Holothele sp Tachira are ones I donated to the raffle.

Thanks for donating them. The 4 little guys look like they're about to hit their second molt for me soon. Really different tarantulas. I haven't kept much like them. They don't look like the standard terrestrial Theraphosid spiderling.

What I've noticed too is that they don't make webs like H. incei. When I separated the H. incei temporarily to clean out molding wood in their group cage, they made hammocks and tube webs almost immediately. The Tachira don't have a trace of visible web in their vials. Do they start producing anything as they get older?

 

[satanslilhelper]

I wish this would be the end of the A. avic communal debate. I know it won't be though.:wall:

On a side note I will be starting a H. lividum communal tomorrow.

Considering I have a successful H. incei communal going I figure I'll just go nuts!!

 

[Bill S]

The Tachira don't have a trace of visible web in their vials. Do they start producing anything as they get older?

They do eventually put down a little webbing - but it's minimal. A little bit of webbing to hide in during a molt, maybe enough to close off the opening of a hide (although a pile of coco fiber is more likely for that). Nothing at all like H. incei - those guys produce lots of webbing.

I've read speculations that Holothele will be revised at some point and H. incei will wind up in a different genus than H. sp Tachira. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

One thing I'm curious about - the ones I keep in separate containers are very high strung and rocket around their containers when disturbed. The ones I keep as a group seem much calmer. I transferred the group to a larger container today, and simply reached in and prodded them one at a time into vials. As I emptied each one into its new container it just wandered around the floor exploring the new turf. I didn't have to cover the cage while I went back to the old cage to catch the next one. When I move those that live alone I have to be prepared for sprinting and teleporting. But... the ones that live alone are larger than the ones the live in a group.