A first and last

Lord VetinariLord Vetinari Registered Users Posts: 15,900 Major grins
edited September 24, 2014 in Holy Macro
A first for me - seeing a male orbweb spider actually mate, but a last for the spider.
I've often watched and photographed courting between orb web spiders which can go on for ages but previously had always resulted in the male running away. This time with a lot of luck I managed to shoot a natural light sequence of a couple. The actual mating was over in less than a second with I think the male scoring a touch down with his pedipalp over the female's epigyne (see crop) and he was then promptly bitten for his trouble. from the positioning it looked like the male only went for it when he managed to get into the correct position for a quick rotational movement.
Brian V.

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Crop from above
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2 shot animation showing rotation movement
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Complete sequence animation
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