Oval St. Andrew's Cross Spider

The spider shown here is an Argiope aemula and it is a male. It is generally known that, in most spider species, the male is smaller than the female, but in the case of A. aemula, the difference in size is extreme. This spotting is a follow-up to https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1368886809... and If you would like to see the relative sizes of the male and female, look at the first photo in that spotting. I was taking photos of the male and female, shown in that spotting, when they were just about to mate, but the female suddenly wrapped and killed an insect which landed on her web. When she started eating her prey, I knew that the act of copulation would be delayed indefinitely and I had no choice, but to end my observation at that point. When I returned, the next morning, I was expecting to see the female, alone, on her web. I was assuming, of course, that there would be no trace of the male. It seemed inevitable, that they would have mated and, as nearly always happens, the female would have killed and eaten him. I have read that a male will, sometimes, survive the murderous attack by the huge female and escape. It is also documented that a male which escapes will rest for a while, to regain his strength, before returning to the female’s web to mate again. Inexplicably, after this second copulation, the male does not put up a fight and allows the female to kill him with ease. I had neither witnessed this, nor seen any evidence of it, until I took the photos for this spotting. The first photo shows the very robust and healthy looking male, on the female’s web on Aug 6, 2024. The other two photos show the same male on Aug 7, 2024, on the “skyway” of silk strands which he built between his own little web and that of the female. You don’t need to look too closely to see that, now, he has only 5 legs. Haemolymph (Arthropod blood) can be seen, leaking from the Coxae (where the legs join to the Cephalothorax). So, what do the pictures tell us? It cannot be that this little male spider has survived two violent attacks by the female (Nothing like that has been documented, as far as I know). So, we are left with only one possibility. The copulation must have taken place, sometime after the female finished eating her prey and returned to her position at the hub. After mating, the female launched her brutal assault. The male must have put up a brave fight and, barely, escaped with his life. Will he go back and try for a second time? Well, despite his terrible injuries, he can still move around and it seems that by copulating again, he is ensuring that his genes are passed on to the next generation. The system seems to work as Argiope spiders have been around for more twenty million years. (Wikipedia: Argiope - Temporal range: Neogene–present).