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Signature Spiders (male & female)
Argiope luzona
15.4561, 119.921
Field Notes
Description:
This spotting is a follow-up to https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1657546956... which showed a male Argiope luzona spider which had left his own web and crossed onto the web of a female, with the intention of mating. As is always the case, the male had to sit and wait for the exact moment that the female indicates that she is ready to accept him (I have no idea how she signals her readiness, but according to everything I have read, on this subject, the male has to wait for a "signal"). Having observed this situation a number of times, I know that the male can't just sit back and relax while he is waiting. This is a deadly ritual and one second of inattention is likely to cost him his life. As you can see, the female is very much bigger than the male and is, of course, a predator. The period of waiting for the "signal" is extremely variable. It can be a matter of a few hours or sometimes several days. In this case, I had been checking these two spiders, from time-to-time, for two days when I saw the male, as shown above, grab hold of the female. Now he was committed and there was absolutely no turning back. So, I was ready, camera in hand, pointing at the spiders and there was no movement by either spider. Had the male made his move too soon and was now trying to think of a way to back off safely, or was he waiting for some other "signal". Please see Notes below.
Habitat:
These spiders were spotted in our backyard. The female's web was moored on unidentified plants (weeds), climbing on the fence around our vegetable plot.
Notes:
So, there were the two spiders, locked in a deadly embrace as if frozen in time. Then something totally unexpected happened. I saw a movement near the right edge of the web. It was a small Tortoise Beetle which flew into the web and got caught on one or two sticky strands. For a second or two, I thought this might break the deadlock and the female might rush over to the beetle and wrap it for lunch, but there was no movement on the web except for the pathetic struggles of the beetle. So, rather than get nothing at all out of this situation, I quickly took a couple of photos of the beetle and then turned my attention back to the spiders. They did not move for almost an hour. So, I went back into the house to eat my lunch. When I returned, about 30 minutes later, everything had changed, The male and female were nowhere to be seen and the web was completely wrecked. I have no idea what happened. So, my attempt at photographing the actual copulation of the spiders was a complete failure. However, failure or not, I learned a little more about Argiope luzona's brutal and deadly life style.
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