What is the ratio of male to female Latrodectus ?

Great Basin Ben

Arachnosquire
Joined
Oct 2, 2010
Messages
86
Hey there to all of you Widow fans. I have been actively pursuing my interest in keeping Widow species for the past month or so. I live in Reno, NV, and have caught over 2 dozen, while casually wandering around the warehouse that I work at. Today, however, I just caught my FIRST, male. That's rougly a 20 to 1 Female to Male ratio.

I, by no means assert, that this is ACTUALLY the biological ratio, but males seem NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to find, while the females, seem to simply be everywhere! Have any of you documented this, or have any info on actual biological data, of this sort of thing. I find it hard to believe that an eggsack of over 1,000 sling, would have as few as 50-100 males in it. However, the frequency in which I come across them, seems to be about this much.

Does anyone have any ideas, or input to add to this??? MUCH APPRECIATION fo looking and contributing.


All the best,
Ben.
 

What

Arachnoprince
Old Timer
Joined
Jul 13, 2006
Messages
1,150
Males tended to construct inferior webs and expend more energy in trapping prey than did females ; more males than females may therefore have died before maturity . A similar situation may have influenced the observations of Softly and Freeth (1970) who reported a male:female sex ratio of 1:5 for L. hasselti. There is no reliable report of a sex ratio other than 1:1 in the literature on Latrodectus.
- http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_free/JoA_v14_n3/JoA_v14_p293.pdf
This, males wander while females are sedentary. You also may simply be looking in the wrong places.
 

Widowman10

Arachno WIDOW
Old Timer
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
4,212
yeah, in my hunting grounds for latros (where they really abound), i find males just as commonly as i do females. mature males i run across a little less, probably just b/c they are out wandering and not tucked away in little neat webs :)
 
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