The Fraught Courtship of Wolf Spiders

Thurday's Guardian Country Diary is a description of the courtship of wolf spiders

The low stone wall along our garden path is a favourite haunt of wolf spiders, like this male that has caught and is eating a fly. Wolf spiders don't make webs - they stalk their prey, so any fly landing on the sun-warmed stones is taking a big risk.

The male wolf spiders detect the presence of females while they are still hidden in the undergrowth - there must be some scent communication. As soon as the males detect a possible mate they begin signalling with the black palps on either side of their head - left,.....

..... then right, alternately ..... then he lowers both and vibrates his front pair of legs, before repeating the whole performance which can go on for hours

The female is larger than the male and very aggressive, so he creeps up on her a little at a time, attempting to pacify her and mate. She repeatedly chases him away, but he doesn't give up.

Here he's captured her attention and is signalling furiously with those palps ...

...... and edges closer. Eventually, when he has her confidence, he transfers sperm to her with those brush-like palps ...

...and then she appears with her egg case attached to the tip of her abdomen, speeding up incubation by sunbathing on the warm stones. Eventually.........




..... she appears with the hatched spiderlings attached to her abdomen. They'll cling to her for a few days until they can fend for themselves.

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Dances with Wolf Spiders

I've recently begun the tedious task of scanning several thousand 35mm. colour transparencies, accumulated over the last 40 years, and thought I'd post a few as I go along. Yesterday, when I was scanning transparencies of arachnids I found these, showing wolf spider courtship. When we moved into our house 25 years ago the garden was just a lawn, a few conifers, a vegetable patch - and a pile of broken paving stones that were the favoured arena for wolf spiders' courtship on warm summer days. This ritual is, of necessity on the part of the male (in the foreground here), a cautious and patient process because he is so much smaller than the female (in the background). He woos her by waving those little black palps on his head, using them like semaphore flags, and his task is to persuade her that he's a worthy potential mate rather than a convenient meal.  As he signals nervously he inches forward, a step at a time.. 

..... and at this point, if she turns nasty, he'll need to leg it pretty swiftly. He tends to move forward a millimetre at a time, she advances in rapid and unpredictable lunges and, with those long legs, she can cover a lot of ground in the blink of an eye. Fortunately for him, spiders don't blink.

The object of his desires. Beautiful, I suppose, if you're a male wolf spider. Those annular highlights in her eyes are the reflection of a ring flash, by the way...

If he gets this close and is still in one piece, then it's probably his lucky day.....

..... and for the next few weeks she'll be carrying around this ball of eggs in a silken cocoon, attached to her abdomen. She spends a lot of time sunbathing, hastening the hatching process, punctuated by grabbing anything edible that's reckless enough to venture within lunging distance. Finally, when hatching day arrives ....

...... in a remarkable display of maternal care, all her little spiderlings climb onto her abdomen and hang on for dear life for a week, until they can fend for themselves. 


More wolf spider pictures here.

Wolf Spiders

This is a male wolf spider - a Pardosa species, I think, though I'm not certain which one but it could well be P. amentata. It's spring, he's looking for a mate and success depends on being very cautious and on using those two palps - the black, hairy, club-shaped arms on either side of his jaws - with consummate skill. If he gets it right he'll become a father, if he gets it wrong he might well become a meal because....

... this is the object of his affections. The female is over twice his size and very aggressive. Wolf spiders chase down and leap on their prey instead of snaring it in a web and have (for a spider) good eyesight. She's watching his every move, so ......

.... he creeps very cautiously over the edge of her leaf and tentatively waves his left palp. Every now and then he'll vibrate it and the tremors will travel through the leaf and be picked up by her feet.

He creeps a little closer and waves his left palp again, like a sailor waving a semaphore flag .....

... then closer still and waves the right one. It's a courtship that goes on for a long time, and if it's successful the outcome looks like this....