Determining widow maturity???

[TroyMcClureOG82]

I have a few L. hesperus that I collected near my home. I'm not sure if I have a male or juvenile female, but since it's nearly as big as some of my mature females, but still has the banded legs and striped abdomen I think it's a male. How can I tell when he's ready to breed? What about females? If they have mature colors does that mean they are sexually mature?

 

[Malhavoc's]

He'll roughly have the same size legspan as the women. and have an extremly tiny abdomen [despite heavy feeding] also their palop bubls are visable through their lives. Makign them easily sexed from lil tiny slings

 

[TroyMcClureOG82]

I found some males recently. Since their bulbs are always visible, how do I determine if they are mature? I found a couple in the middle of courting a female so I know they are mature, but other ones I found vary in size.

 

[Malhavoc's]

I've always let them co habitate with the female for awhile, they'll show immediate attention to her if mature [within a few hours] And Msot males that I've encountered have the same legspan as a female when mature.

 

[TroyMcClureOG82]

My females are HUGE. One is pushing two inches in legspan. The males I've found legspans are half that size, but they are very interested in the females. I found one strumming a female's web and his legspan was about the size of that female, but her legspan is much smaller than the legspan of my already captive females.

 

[TroyMcClureOG82]

Maybe I exaggerated at bit but this pic shows her exuvia to measure over 1.75" and she molted out a tid bigger. You can see the male next to her in the second pic and she dwarfs him in legspan. His legspan measured out to ~.75" Both pics were taken today and as you can see she molted today.

If you look real close at the first pic you can see that the very tip of her front leg is exactly at 1.75", and the broken piece of leg next to it is from the back leg. The other back leg fell of as I was removing the shed from her enclosure. With the legs fully stretched out and counting the broken piece of back leg she was over 1.75"

 

[Malhavoc's]

A very nice Sized specimen indeed! once again if their strumming their mature and you shouldn't have to worry about cnaabilization as long as the male has some ground room to fall too or lets of web room to run on. I just snet off the biggest specimen I've seen Unfortunetly I didn't think to take pictures of it. I think its leg span pushed 2" perhaps 2.15" possibly..