Notes on nigma walckenaeri
Nigma walckenaeri Plays a Mating Game by Paul Prince
From S.R.S. News. No. 53. in The Newsletter No. 104 November 2005
I am lucky enough to have a small population of these
beautiful and notable spiders in my garden. Their
distribution is mainly confined to London and south
Essex, although there are records from Gloucestershire. In
this West London garden they have taken up residence on
ivy which in turn has consumed the fence, adjacent to the
ivy is a rose bush and Fatsia japonica - the spiders can be
found here too and they seem to be very keen to set up
shop on the latter. I have tried to photograph them before
with little success as the spiders are quite small (3-4 mm)
and the leaves on which they reside are very reflective.
On a late August morning I spotted a male wandering
around the F. japonica leaves in search of a female. I'm
sorry to say that I missed any courtship between the pair
as I had rushed in the house to retrieve my camera and
upon my return I found the couple embraced. The male
appeared to lift the female free from the leaf surface and
in this position the couple remained for a period of 5-10
minutes. At the end of their copulation there was a brief
struggle with the pair dancing around the leaf before the
embrace was ended. Curiously, the male stayed put,
occupying his mate's web, whilst she ran away onto
another leaf. The male remained alone in her web for a
period of 24 hours, after this time he was gone. I found it
odd that the female ran away leaving the male in her web.
I have witnessed this phenomenon on two separate
occasions, however, and I have also seen a male and
female sharing a web, although whether mating had taken
place in the latter case is not known.
Added by John Partridge at 16:53 on Fri 17th Feb 2012.
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