Mating monsters

This is an event that I have witnessed many times, but never managed a good position to capture the image - The mating of nephila pilipes, the golden orb web weaver spider.

This is not a macro, in fact the closest I could get to the action was approximately 2m. But, with the female being about 45mm long (1.75"), you don't have to get that close to capture detail.

As you can see, the red male is considerably smaller than the female, I guess this reduces the females interest in the male, but I have never seem mating take place without the female enjoying a large lunch at the same time. In fact, at one point, just before mating, the male climbed on top of the cephalothorax of the female and reached over with his front legs, seemingly to check that she was feeding.

This image has to be looked at with this macro of the male, it will give a better idea of what is going on, once you understand the structure of the males palps.

The male picks up a blob of its seed with its bulbous palps and inserts the point of the palp into the female and injects the seed into her. He does this with both palps, one at a time. The female has two corresponding openings to receive the palps.

If you go large (L) and press ctrl+++++, you will be able to zoom in and see the point of the palp being inserted (ctrl---- to back out again).

One day, I am hoping to be able to get an up close and personal view and capture some detailed images.

Dave