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Oval St. Andrew's Cross Spider
Argiope aemula
15.4558, 119.922
Field Notes
Description:
I have been feeding this spider and generally looking after it in a cage for six days now (please see Habitat below). Sometime, during its first night in the cage, this female Argiope aemula created an egg sac, probably containing several hundred eggs. That egg sac was the subject of https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/260557855 I knew that it was not her first egg sac because I had observed her in the rice field, with a great many hatchlings near her web. It was the timely dispersal of the hatchlings which gave me the opportune moment to capture this spider and place it in the cage. My idea was to release her into our front garden or backyard as soon as possible. I was both pleased and surprised to see that, during her first night in the cage, she produced an egg sac. So, that put her release on hold. I did not want to release her to a selected spot in the garden and place the egg sac beside her because there was a possibility that, in a state of traumatism, she might abandon the eggs and move to another location. Please see Notes below.
Habitat:
This is one of the spiders which I rescued from a rice field just before harvesting time. So, its original habitat was the rice field, but it is now in a temporary habitat, a cage in our terrace.
Notes:
I have never, during any of my observations of Argiope spiders, seen an egg sac being created and filled with eggs. So, I thought that this spider, if she produces yet another egg sac, might give me the opportunity to observe the event and take some pictures. The main problem, in trying to take pictures of this kind of event, is knowing when to be watching. After the spider created her egg sac in the cage, six days ago, I knew that she had produced the sac and laid her eggs during the night, but this was my first experience of an egg sac from an Argiope aemula and I had no idea how long it would be before she made another. All that I knew was that it would be at night. That doesn't make the task very easy. However, the amazing appearance of another egg sac in her cage this morning with the spider still working on it gave me some very important information. Since she was still working on this egg sac at 5:50 a.m. this morning, when I took the above photos, I know that I should be watching her, with my camera ready, from around 4:00 a.m. The remaining question is, of course, which morning? Well, this egg sac came only six days after the previous one. So, I should be ready on the morning of Oct, 26 at 4:00 a.m. and try my luck. To give myself as great a chance as possible, I will probably start one day earlier, on Oct, 25 and be prepared to continue on subsequent mornings, if the spider has any "variables" that I don't know about.
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