Phidippus audax gender/life stage?

[aspooder]

Came to provide an update to folks, as Ruby definitely had babies! She wove a pretty thick home ~3.5 weeks ago, and as of yesterday, we have started to see her little bbs! You'll probably need to enlarge the photos below, but hopefully you can see them starting to emerge! Thanks to @egyptiancrow and @regalpaws for the advice/info on caring for wild caught adult females and the likelihood that she was gravid.

Have been spraying the enclosure to keep the humidity up for the wee bbs and going to get some wingless fruit flies this weekend and start to try to get some of them to emerge from the web if possible since they're starting to move around.

 

[CRX]

Came to provide an update to folks, as Ruby definitely had babies! She wove a pretty thick home ~3.5 weeks ago, and as of yesterday, we have started to see her little bbs! You'll probably need to enlarge the photos below, but hopefully you can see them starting to emerge! Thanks to @egyptiancrow and @regalpaws for the advice/info on caring for wild caught adult females and the likelihood that she was gravid.

Have been spraying the enclosure to keep the humidity up for the wee bbs and going to get some wingless fruit flies this weekend and start to try to get some of them to emerge from the web if possible since they're starting to move around.

View attachment 421384 View attachment 421385

Just be careful about the spraying, as they prefer dry surfaces to walk on and its harder for them to walk on surfaces with water.

 

[aspooder]

Just be careful about the spraying, as they prefer dry surfaces to walk on and its harder for them to walk on surfaces with water.

Yep! I have been spraying the substrate and/or the back wall of the enclosure early in the day (when they don't seem to be active/anywhere near the opening of the web)

Thanks for this info!