Phidippus Audax Conflict Resolution
Between Phidippus Audax spiders, courtship is serious business. As they approach one another, the male makes large gestures with his forelegs partly to indicate his non-threatening, amorous intent to the female, and partly to make it clear that he is too big to be eaten.
It turns out that this poor male was courting a female over twice his size, and no matter how big you wave your legs, that kind of ambition is only going to end in tears. Or, in this case, with having venomous fangs driven through your face. Among spiders, this amounts to the same thing.
I did not see the beginning of this face-off, and throughout my photographing session I never got a good enough angle to see if the dead spider was in fact male. It could well be that the larger female simply stumbled upon another audax and ate it. I suspect that this is not the case, however, as I have seen jumping spiders meet up in the wild on several occasions. The larger spider would have been too slow to catch the smaller one except by surprise, which would contraindicate the face-to-face pose. Furthermore, when a smaller spider bumps into a larger one like this, perhaps coming around the corner, the smaller spider will immediately jump for it, trusting gravity to carry it away to safety. My (completely unprofessional) interpretation is that whatever happened here, the smaller spider saw it coming and didn’t run. It was either looking for love, or it was somehow cornered.
Phidippus spiders go through several molts, called instars, in their life cycle. The large spider facing the camera is marked with white bands; this identifies her as a mature adult. The spider she is eating has a slight pink tinge to its markings, indicating that it is immature. Phidippus audax spiders start out with bright red-orange markings that gradually change to white with each molt. This immaturity does not preclude courtship, however: jumping spiders begin mating in their penultimate instar (the females do not lay eggs until after their final molt).
Kenyon Colloran said,
October 6, 2007 @ 1:48 am
“It turns out that this poor male was courting a female over twice his size, and no matter how big you wave your legs, that kind of ambition is only going to end in tears. Or, in this case, with having venomous fangs driven through your face.”
Brilliant.
Kazriko said,
October 8, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
I think I saw one of these with the green face in my yard, on an old clothes line pole that I dug up.
singingnettle said,
October 13, 2007 @ 7:49 am
Poor little guy.
I guess ambition is not an adaptive trait among jumping wolf spiders.
Insect Picture of the Day » Phidippus Audax said,
October 22, 2007 @ 7:06 am
[…] butterfly wing. When threatened or courting (and as we’ve already seen, with jumping spiders this is often the same thing), they raise and spread their forelegs to make themselves appear larger, and they draw aside their […]