Stacey's Web Development Co.

[Ah Lee]

You should shortly be seeing two very different sizes. Males will simply stop growing. Fortunately predation among the young is virtually unheard of. Won't do any harm to allow the males to make themselves at home near to each other. When they make webs they will be pretty small at first. One or two inch across orbs. Very cute. Once mature they will often move into the perimeter of the females webs, often living their entire lives there. They are all obligatory web builders. No web, they die. Males will probably get by on fruit flies. Just leave a piece or two of rotting fruit out.They may try using the neighbors webs and food. I've seen 4 or 5 male webs sharing guy lines, right up against each other. Females love moths and are much more independent
Please note, this is all from observations in situ. If they do odd things I'd very much like to read about it.

Thanks Snark, I'll try a rotting fruit/apple cider vinegar trap tomorrow. If I can just get them large enough to take a cricket leg, it'll all be uphill from there. Right now they are so tiny I accidentally drowned one when misting

 

[Ah Lee]

Eat your veggies, kids!

It's been a hectic week looking after the kiddos. The second batch has hatched, and the first batch is starting to web nicely. I'll write a longer update later, but for now I'll leave this really interesting photo here, the kids are eating and loving flower pollen!

 

[Ah Lee]

Stacey's Web Dev Co. Report

Hello everyone, and welcome to the report of the latest happenings and non-happenings at SWDC.

First and foremost, the new employee pantry is up, and is stocked full of crickets, dragonflies, butterflies, fruit flies and pollen.



The plan to catch a week's worth of dragonflies and then stock them in the pantry has failed due to the food simply not cooperating and dying prematurely. Hence the board has decided to send the human slave to catch fresh food 3 times a week, and provided him with a better net to work more efficiently.



A proper insect net works wonders, it's almost a 100% catch rate now. I now just park up by the road on the way home, catch 2 dragon/butterflies, say Hi to Stacey, and leave. All in all, a 10 minute detour, so it's hardly a chore.

Back in the office, our CEO Pepper has decided she didn't like her new office space after all, and decided to move....right back to her old spot.




Her new web is huge again, spanning about a meter across but it's slightly more tilted inwards, which is great news because it means I can now use my massage chair again. Also I prefer it when she faces away from me. When flicking food, sometimes my hand movement scares her, which doesn't happen if she's facing away from me. She has rebuilt this web once so far, so she's really hardworking for a Nephila. I believe the UVA+heat lamp I bought her makes all the difference. She's energetic, and keeps her web in tip-top shape.

I decided to take some videos of feeding time, since it is easily my favorite part of keeping orbweavers. Feeding response is usually down to 2 factors: how hungry they are and how scared they are. The hungrier they are, the more aggressively they attack. The more scared they are, the more cautiously they attack. And vice versa.

Pepper is close to her molt now, so she probably isn't very hungry. Also I bumped into her a few times as I was setting up the camera, so this is one of the slower feeding responses she has.

Here Skittles is pretty much scared because, again, I clumsily bumped her cage when setting up the camera. But she is famished as she is recovering from her egg-laying, so she still chose to come out of her hide. In this case, she usually employs a grab-and-scoot strategy, especially for butterflies because their wings cause them to not stick very well. Dragonflies usually need to be cut out, but she'll still bring it back to her lair to eat, especially if it's daytime.

After Pepper's next molt, I'll take a video of when she's famished and hopefully not scared. The difference in temperament is astounding!

Here are the 3 main types of food I feed:

Crickets
Easily my most hated food to feed. I only feed these in an emergency. First off, they don't stick well. Being terrestial, they have a much higher weight-to-surface ratio, which means you need to put some effort in to tangle them in the web. This will means your spider will most probably be scared shitless, so you'll have to leave the room and wait and hope the cricket doesn't fall off. You can try throwing them in the web, but for free-roaming orbweavers, the force needed to catapult it onto the web will usually just sent the cricket clean through the web. The only good thing about them is being heavy-bodied, one cricket can fill your spider for a long, long time. I use them only in emergencies.

Butterflies
Butterflies are also a little tricky. First off, they are very sensitive, and can seem to detect and avoid the web extremely well. I have seen them flutter around in Skittle's cage, and everytime they touch the web, they turn tail and escape. They also have sheddable scales, which means they also have a good chance of escaping once caught. Lastly, they have a pretty low amount of meat for their size. Now, to the good part. If you are holding them by one wing in your tongs, they keep fluttering. This is extremely helpful because orbweavers go absolutely bonkers for a fluttering prey. They are my go-to prey for tong-feeding. Also, their fluttering means that you can just hold it near the web, and it'll probably get itself tangled up beyond salvation. Sometimes I just slam in into a wall to knock it out cold, and throw it into the web, and I almost always get a good response. Also, they are easily scared, so for cage-dwellers like Skittles I can use my hand to scare them, and that usually results in them crashing into the web in their panic.

Dragonflies
My staple for my orbweavers. They are plentiful and easy to catch. They are pretty meaty compared to butterflies, and they are a little hardier so I can keep them for a day or two. The best part is that their legs are designed to catch prey, which on the flip side means that once it comes into contact with a web, it is almost always immediately gets stuck. Even when dead, tossing it into the web has a 99% chance its feet will get stuck in the web. I have had one caught by Stacey with only 2 strands of silk. Also, they are much dumber and will happily crash headlong into a web. Downsides is that they are much stronger, so can destroy a large part of the web as they struggle, or even scare off the spider. They get stuck good, so even when they are dead, the spider will usually need to cut a significant portion of the web to remove it properly. Finally they are terrible for cage-dwellers. They tend to not want to fly and will just sit in one spot to die. They are also terrible for tong-feeding because they tend not to flutter when held by a tong, and when they do, it's very strong.

Next up, I'll document some of experiences with feeding Skittle's babies. It's not easy, but I think I worked something out!

 

[kevinlowl]

Open setup for orb weavers are cool af dude. To have one in the office I imagine it must be quite a conversation starter. And wow this is my first time seeing a Nephila kuhlii, it's such a ridiculously good looking spider. Awesome thread, looking forward to more updates.

 

[Ah Lee]

Open setup for orb weavers are cool af dude. To have one in the office I imagine it must be quite a conversation starter. And wow this is my first time seeing a Nephila kuhlii, it's such a ridiculously good looking spider. Awesome thread, looking forward to more updates.

It's actually my home office, so not many people visit, but I think this little room has become an arachnophobia treatment center. Everyone that hangs around this room often has gotten over their arachnophobia, my sister even sleeps in the same room as Pepper when she stays over now

 

[Ah Lee]

A quick rebuild



Pepper rebuilt her web again, the hardworking little thing. And decided to flip over to the other side, so now I can get a proper photo of her again.

Also she pooped in my face as I was taking this photo. Nephilas spray their poop in a huge arc, I don't know why. Can't they just poop downwards like civilized spiders do?

 

[The Snark]

Also she pooped in my face as I was taking this photo. Nephilas spray their poop in a huge arc, I don't know why. Can't they just poop downwards like civilized spiders do?

My conjecture is contrast. Spider poop is typically white which stands out starkly in their native jungle environments and makes the web, and spider therein, an easier target for their main nemesis, birds.

 

[Ah Lee]

My conjecture is contrast. Spider poop is typically white which stands out starkly in their native jungle environments and makes the web, and spider therein, an easier target for their main nemesis, birds.

That makes a lot of sense. If they didn't spray it, it'll probably be on their bodies and webs, especially if the wind conditions are right. My first thought was pheromones, but I somehow doubt poop will be a good carrier for phermomones.

Giving the kids an education



Our little escapee made a web over my books. Is this how they start learning to build webs?

 

[The Snark]

@Ah Lee That picture demands to be framed and put on a wall with the caption beneath, Evolve!

 

[Ah Lee]

@Ah Lee That picture demands to be framed and put on a wall with the caption beneath, Evolve!

You theenk it funny, hooman, but I has learnt your ways and no how to use dee computer now.
Today I take over dis thread, tomolo I take over your wold wide web.
Is funny you call dis a thread, and dis place a website, but I canot find even one strand of seelk.
Your speecees will fall, spiders will rulz

 

[Ah Lee]

Feeding woes

**Sorry for the above interruption. The little spiderling has since been caught and returned to her cage.**

So after experimenting with cricket juice, I tried superworm juice as well. It was so much easier because they juiced well and didn't have clumps of body parts clogging up the spray nozzle.
But after a few days, the container started to really smell, and and walls were just coated with dead worm. So it was time to do a rehouse.

I sealed all holes in the cage with tape, and opted for a TP substrate. It makes it much easier to spot slings, molts, or any bad stuff. Some furniture was stolen from Skittle's tank for web anchoring.



I also cut a hole in the mesh and modified it to fit a test tube cap.



I use these test tubes to catch fruit flies and mosquitoes, so feeding them is a simple matter of quickly opening the cap and popping the test tube on.



Within hours, all of them have had a web up, so the first thing I did was to try feeding them crushed bee pollen.



Mixed with water, the pollen makes quite a sticky mess, but the kids love it, and will suck on a single pollen grain for hours on end. It's incredible to see, I feel that this will hopefully supplement them till they are big enough to catch their own food.

This is the biggest one now, along with having the biggest web, but he/she is still just a little more than an mm across, but has a web about 20cm huge.



My worry now is that pollen is, after all, just a supplement. They do not seem to be taking anymore. And so far I have only seen ONE fruit fly being captured. The fruit flies seem to be very smart at avoiding the webs, and if they do get trapped momentarily, they will usually drop downwards, and tumble down the web with the spider in pursuit.

This lets me know 2 things:
1. They are ready for insect prey
2. It's just a numbers game. I need MORE fruit flies. I have yet to see a mosquito get trapped, but bear in mind the mosquito is about thrice their size.

So my plan for catching food is pretty simple. Some rotten banana and a good ol' fruit fly trap.



I got 10 inside the last time I did it, and captured about 7 in the test tubes. Hopefully I can get more, and give them a better chance at snagging one. I think 2 or 3 is all they need to reach the next molt.

Meanwhile I hang about mosquito-ridden spots and bait them with my legs, so there are 3 mosquitoes in there now.

The things I do for my kids, tsk.

Feeding them is proving to be a challenge, but I just need to get them big enough to take a cricket leg, and it's all uphill from there!

 

[The Snark]

@Ah Lee Just thinking out loud here.

-From various papers; the quality and variety of webs the spider makes to some degree depends upon it getting the complex proteins in their diet from prey. Simple plant proteins may not supply the variety for it's nutritional needs.
-Mosquitoes. Poor choice of food. They are adept flyers and capable of flight of a km or more in a 24 hour period. Seldom get captured in webbing.
-Fruit flies are also ranging adept flyers and hard to trap.
-Thinking of the yearly mating flights of insects common throughout the Nephila range. A vast variety of different species, nearly all of which are very poor and weak flyers, only flying for a few hours before burning up their nutrition resources.
-Most of these mating flights coincide with spider species reproductive cycles.
-Mating flights occur most often after the brief rain showers during the spring warming season or in the tropics, the hot season. The majority of mating flights occurs at dusk during the transition periods of the diurnal and nocturnal predators
-In many locales the young spiderlings hatching coincides with termite swarming which provides a tremendous abundance of food sources which are ready victims for all insectivores. Incapable of extended sustained flight and unable to defend themselves. Essentially flying-walking dead relatively large sacks of proteins.

 

[Ah Lee]

@Ah Lee Just thinking out loud here.

-From various papers; the quality and variety of webs the spider makes to some degree depends upon it getting the complex proteins in their diet from prey. Simple plant proteins may not supply the variety for it's nutritional needs.
-Mosquitoes. Poor choice of food. They are adept flyers and capable of flight of a km or more in a 24 hour period. Seldom get captured in webbing.
-Fruit flies are also ranging adept flyers and hard to trap.
-Thinking of the yearly mating flights of insects common throughout the Nephila range. A vast variety of different species, nearly all of which are very poor and weak flyers, only flying for a few hours before burning up their nutrition resources.
-Most of these mating flights coincide with spider species reproductive cycles.
-Mating flights occur most often after the brief rain showers during the spring warming season or in the tropics, the hot season. The majority of mating flights occurs at dusk during the transition periods of the diurnal and nocturnal predators
-In many locales the young spiderlings hatching coincides with termite swarming which provides a tremendous abundance of food sources which are ready victims for all insectivores. Incapable of extended sustained flight and unable to defend themselves. Essentially flying-walking dead relatively large sacks of proteins.

Thank you @The Snark , your experience and insight is always really helpful!
It does make a lot of sense, mosquitoes are really agile fliers, dodging our angry swats with impunity. I watched as they zipped around, sometimes touching, the webs with ease.
Fruitflies were a bit dumber, and crashed into the webs sometimes, but like I mentioned, they seemed to just stop, drop and roll upon touching a web, and would just tumble harmlessly to the ground.

I took a trip to the forest today to try and find some suitable prey (hopefully winged termites), but I wasn't able to catch any before it started raining. I'll give it another go tomorrow!

 

[Ah Lee]

Jackpot!



It's an awesome day today, our little escapee has caught a fruit fly! So far I have the most hope for her. She has molted before all the other 7 slings in the same cage as her, she's the one who seems to be most active in eating pollen, she has the 2nd largest web, and she caught a fruit fly now!

If I were to judge solely on size, I would hope this little thing is a female, and if she is, she will be the one I keep!

Also this is one of the tinier fruit flies, so you can see how small they are and why I am tearing my hair out feeding them. But I have to say, watching them grow is so worth it!

 

[The Snark]

I took a trip to the forest today to try and find some suitable prey (hopefully winged termites), but I wasn't able to catch any before it started raining. I'll give it another go tomorrow!

They break out after a rain but I'm pretty sure they only fly at night. See the people hunting termites, finding the nest and catching certain species as they come out like a fountain just after dark. I wonder if they could be frozen?

Looks like fruit flies are the answer, at least for now. If you can put up with them it should be easy to farm a few billion.
If you have rice fields nearby how about getting a fine mesh butterfly net? Go out just at dusk and collect a few kg! They should be flooding the fields about now so there must be mating swarming of all sorts of species coming up.

I'm really curious how the kids mature. How often are they molting? When they start to show dimoprhism? Start giving hints of adult coloration. The attrition rate and if you can do things the reduce it. Lots of blanks to fill in.
I wonder if Pepper will accept a few of these next generation boyfriends?

 

[Ah Lee]

Drumstick!



Yes the the little escapee has taken it's first cricket leg! I pulled the front legs off the smallest cricket in my box, poked a little hole in the mesh and dropped it. Out of 4 legs, 2 got stuck, and it ate them both! It's abdomen has grown significantly in size now, so i expect a molt to be coming soon.

I will try to feed the others the same way, but not all of them have webs so near the mesh, and their webs are mostly tiny.

I feel this one would be a female, but it's a completely baseless, unscientific feel, so I'll just keep observing!

 

[Ah Lee]

They break out after a rain but I'm pretty sure they only fly at night. See the people hunting termites, finding the nest and catching certain species as they come out like a fountain just after dark. I wonder if they could be frozen?

Looks like fruit flies are the answer, at least for now. If you can put up with them it should be easy to farm a few billion.
If you have rice fields nearby how about getting a fine mesh butterfly net? Go out just at dusk and collect a few kg! They should be flooding the fields about now so there must be mating swarming of all sorts of species coming up.

I stay in a very developed city, so wildlife is scarce, and it's illegal to catch stuff in nature reserves, but so far there are a few spots that I have managed to find that are still relatively safe (far away enough from buildings where they spray insecticide frequently), and Stacey's resting place is one of them. Termites seem to be really hard to find nowadays though, when I was younger i remembered they used to swarm our lights after rainy days. Now there isn't even one. But with some wild-caught flying stuff, my fruit fly culture and cricket legs, I think my feeding plan is set!

 

[Ah Lee]

I'm really curious how the kids mature. How often are they molting? When they start to show dimoprhism? Start giving hints of adult coloration. The attrition rate and if you can do things the reduce it. Lots of blanks to fill in.
I wonder if Pepper will accept a few of these next generation boyfriends?

For my 2nd batch I mostly adopted a "leave-them-alone" attitude. Other than the occasional misting, I hardly go near them. And somehow this batch appears to be developing faster than the first.

1. They take about a month to hatch, and during this time I mostly left them alone. I mist Skittle's cage occasionally, but that's about it. I move the egg to the incubator at week 2.
2. After hatching they are mostly yellowish with fat yellow butts. After a molt they start becoming dark and losing the yolk. That is about 3-4 days after hatching.
3. About 10 days after hatching, they started scattering. This is much faster than the first batch. This time my incubator has a screen lid, so perhaps a breeze is triggering their instincts to scatter?
4. I am at 16 days now, and so far none have died. In fact, for the previous batch the only ones that died were the ones I accidentally drowned while misting. One very interesting thing I noticed is that even though they are scattered at this point, they still seem to function as a swarm.

You see how they are clustered together? They move around the container as a cluster as well. Also with the 1st batch, I had an escape through an air hole. What amazed me was about half the batch escaped through the same air hole together, and then formed a cluster about 2 metres up on my ceiling. Probably less than 5 were separated from the cluster, but I managed to recapture the entire lot in one fell swoop.
The fact that they migrated as a swarm just baffled me, but it was lucky that I didn't have to deal with an infestation.
5. At the stage they do drink a bit when I mist, but still do not take pollen. I will try pollen feeding again later and if they take it, I will plan my release because this is the point when they start building their little webs.
6. So far after building their webs, the first batch has molted between 1-2 times. They still have not gained any adult coloration, and neither do they display sexual dimorphism. The only difference between them is size, but suspect that is just how much they have been eating. They would probably have grown much faster if I had found a reliable way to feed them early on, so I would say their rate of growth is slow only due to my poor care. Hopefully with the pollen, fruit flies and cricket legs, they will start thriving now!

 

[Ah Lee]

It's raining drumsticks!



After realising that they will happily take a cricket leg four times their weight, it was time to start the carpet bombing. It was like playing one of those claw machines. I will try to estimate a good position to drop the leg from, then use a small penknife to drill a hole in the mesh.

One tiny cricket gets me 4 tries. The rest of the cricket goes to mom, who is baffled by the unexplained appearance of front-legless crickets.

One of the biggest challenges is getting the leg on the orbweb itself, as most of the time it gets caught in the barrier webs. But the resident mosquito is being really helpful, and everytime she flies past the webs, she vibrates it and the spiderling will almost always realised there is food in the web.

So far 5 of them have gotten a leg, but 2 of them are below their siblings' webs, so there is no way to drop a leg to them, I guess they will have to wait for the fruit flies then!

 

[Ah Lee]

Meet Coffee.

Our little escapee has a name now! She is Coffee, the latest intern in Stacey's Web Dev. Co.

She just had her 3rd molt today, and is starting to get a bit of mom's colors. It was really quick! By the time I got my camera and was struggling to focus, she was halfway done.






She is looking much more like a spider now and less like a blob with legs. Don't let the photos fool you, she's still really tiny, at about 3mm in legspan. Everything happens in fast motion with these little things, they grow up so fast!

Also I have yet to see sexual dimorphism, the only difference I am seeing is size, which can be wildly unreliable. I'll keep observing!