Latrodectus tredecimguttatus

[Armen Seropian]

Hello.

I would like to share some information an pics about keeping in captivity Latrodectus tredecimguttatus that is known by the local name "karakurt" meaning "black wolf". Hope, you'll find it interesting.

On a 29 of May, in the surroundings of Tbilisi (capital of Georgia), i was lifting a stones hoping to find some mature Galeodes araneoides, when under on of the stones, there was an ants' nest, but suddenly my attention was attracted by a brightly coloured small spider, that appeared to be an immature Latrodectus tredecimguttatus about 5 mm in length. After housing it has made a web and 2 weeks later molted into a subadult male (what a pity, cause I was hoping it would become a fatty female). Another 2 weeks later the spider has molted one last time, became an adult and stopped feeding - now the only goal was to mate with a female and leave it's genetic code.

On a 31 of July near the place the male was found, I came across the gigantic female, that of course was brought at home. Shortly after the reunion, the male started to show interest in her, crawling near and shaking the web, trying to reach out his madam. 2 hours ago the permission was given, he crawled on the abdomen, repeatedly drumming with pedipalps on her belly near the epigyne and the couple has mated and almost immediately the male was devoured.

2 weeks later the egg-laying process has started. Аt intervals of 3-4 days 3 eggsacks were laid. During the intervals the female gained her mass and shortly before egg-laying refused to accept any food. It was interesting, how far she can go in captivity - I was not able to find any mention about the maximum number of eggsacks in wild, also the highest number on most of photos on the internet equaled 4.

At the right moment, she has made 6 eggsacks - each subsequent larger than the previous. The last one was made the day before yesterday late night, lucky me to spot this and managed to take a video of the process from the very beginning till almost the very end (unfortunatelt the battery died and I was not able to record how the cocoon is covered with last layer of fine yellow silk). If someone is interested in video, I think I could upload it to the youtube and share the link in this topic.

You may see the pics of the subadult male and the female with 4-th or 3-rd cocoon attached.

[Jürgen Guttenberger]

A beautiful observation and very nice Pictures, congratulation!

Jürgen

[Anes Pitrio]

Wonderful work and a Great story! 

I have never done this. I am too busy bringing insects home. I always keep eggs and pupa to see what comes out.

I would love it if you would offer some tips about captivity. What do you keep the spiders in? an aquarium?
I have never done this before. I always work with animals in the wild. I'd love to do this with spiders.

You've made some excellent photos. I am fascinated by your work.
I will definitely watch the video if you post it. I have a youtube account but I use it to post computer programming videos. I've studied web design and computer programming for many years. I'm an erudite (self-taught by reading and practicing.) The same goes for insects and spiders. I teach myself by observing them in the wild. I have no university degrees in these fields of study.

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wojH27jpOtc

Anyway, I will get some popcorn and watch your lovely video   

[Armen Seropian]

Glad you've liked it, Jurgen and Anes!
Anes, there really are no tips in keeping Latrodectus tredecimguttatus in captivity. The main tip is keeping the enclosure dry (i have mine one housed in to the aquarium with 50x15x30 cm dimensions). It will readily accept absolutely any kind of food, starting from large locusts (Locusta migratoria and Calliptamus italicus) ending with beetles (Capnodis tenebrionis for example), but I have to say, that the large beetles are the hard one to kill. For example it took her almost 6 hours to kill large Capnodis tenebrionis because of it's strong chitin cover  And yes, a good ventilation is important, because the spider has quit stinky feces 

Here's the video I took recently, uploaded by my friend (you may check his channel, there are some interesting so called stereo animations of spiders)  And yes, the eggs are violet!

[Anes Pitrio]

I've watched the video and it was great. Thank You for sharing. Please say Thank You to your Friend as well. I will watch some more of his videos whenever I have the time to do so. Very good videos 

[Armen Seropian]

Thank you, Anes! I will try to keep this topic in update as soon as something new happens
Also I wonder of longevity of the species in enclosure with moderate and high temperature. Maybe she can make it to the next year, that means the species could be found much later in a more southern regions (Spain, Israel and e.t.c.) than Georgia.

[Tobias]

Nice observations and high quality-pictures. I would like to see this black form in the Wiki, if it's ok for you.

How much percentage of L. tredecimguttatus in your populations show this black pattern? I'm curious, because already Gertsch wrote that this species becomes black in the east of their distribution, but there's no study about this.

Tobias

[Armen Seropian]

Nice observations and high quality-pictures. I would like to see this black form in the Wiki, if it's ok for you.

How much percentage of L. tredecimguttatus in your populations show this black pattern? I'm curious, because already Gertsch wrote that this species becomes black in the east of their distribution, but there's no study about this.

Tobias

You have my permission to use any of my pictures posted on this forum.
I can't say that i have seen a lot L. tredecimguttatus in my country, but all the female (about 10 specimens) of an equal size were fully black, some of them with white markings/rings.

[Tobias]

Thanks, very interesting.

Tobias

[Armen Seropian]

Tobias, here are some of the local L. tredecimguttatus adult females.

[Armen Seropian]

As i've promiissed, I'm keeping the topic updated, so here it goes - today, between 1 and 2 AM (the same time as previously) she has woven another cocoon, to be correct, the seventh one.  She is an egg-producing machine

[Armen Seropian]

Another update - on the situation this morning, we have 8 egg sacks. Looking forward to make the number till 10

[Armen Seropian]

So here's the ending of the story. Before female has passed away, a total number of egg sacks has raised up to 10. A total number of hatched spiderlings was between 700-800 (753 to be precise), all of them were released back to nature.

[Tobias]

This is very interesting and I think worth to be published in a short note. Did you let the female mate in captivity?

Tobias

[Tobias]

I did some research, and Levy (1998) mentioned 7-8 egg sacs, with up to 450 eggs per egg-sac. Shulov (1940) (cited in Melic 2000) describes a variation of 84-452 egg per egg sac. But I could not found something about spiderlings hatched from the egg-sacs. Since theridiids often produce unfertilized egg sacs, it would be interesting to know how many spiderlings a female is able to produce.  Did you noted the counts of spiderlings for each egg sac?

Tobias

[Armen Seropian]

Yes, the female has mated in captivity, also I don't know if she has mated in nature before, so it's unknown if all of the offspring was produced by copulation with single male.
No Tobias, I hadn't count number of spiderlings for each egg sack and I'm not sure it was possible, because I've found slings all together hatched on one day And thank you for an interesting additional information (452 eggs in a single egg sack is quite a number!).

[Tobias]

I've integrated your observations in our wiki (https://wiki.arages.de/index.php?title=Latrodectus_tredecimguttatus), see "Fortpflanzung" and here (https://wiki.arages.de/index.php?title=Latrodectus_tredecimguttatus/Beobachtungen/Armen_Seropian). Can we use your excellent pictures? We don't have a black specimen in the gallery, so it would be a valuable addition.

Tobias

[Armen Seropian]

Yes Tobias, you may use any of my pictures for Wiki development.