Pisaura mirabilis

[Bios.]

One of my favorite spiders in the UK, they display some some really interesting behaviour. There has been a fair amount of research on them mainly about their mating behaviour where the male offers a nuptial gift apparently to prevent the female eating him after they have mated. See this: Sign in to read: Spiders play dead to get laid - life - 27 February 2008 - New Scientist and this: Male Spiders Scam Females with Gift-Wrapped Garbage: Scientific American Podcast. I would love to use them as a study species.

These shots are from a couple of females that I have been keeping, I was meaning to photograph them and release them but the weather here has been awful for ages and I've been really busy so they've almost become pets!

#1

P. mirabilis in web by [[BIOSPHERE]], on Flickr

#2

P. mirabilis in web by [[BIOSPHERE]], on Flickr

#3

P. mirabilis with prey by [[BIOSPHERE]], on Flickr

#4

P. mirabilis egg-sac by [[BIOSPHERE]], on Flickr

#5

P. mirabilis young by [[BIOSPHERE]], on Flickr

 

[cgipson1]

Beautiful arachnid! Very nice shots.. and that is quite an egg sac! Approximately how large are the babies?

 

[Bios.]

Thanks it seems like she finds it very difficult to run whilst carrying the egg sac like that! The babies are 1-2mm, I think that shot was taken at about 4x on a crop sensor so pretty small!