Breeding Pterinochilus murinus

Breeding Pterinochilus murinus

By Michal Toran


This defensive spider Pterinochilus murinus Pocock, 1897 is native to Africa (Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzany, Uganda and Zambia). It belongs to the subfamily Harpactiriinae and its fundamental coulouring is auburn, but it can be also foxy, as far as grizzly and, that is to say, pretty variable in colouration. Body size can be up to 7 cm, but I think, that in captivity, females can get this size only rarely. Males are generally smaller.

I bought a female, which is the main participant in this stage, as a spiderling after two moults from a breeder from Brno on 25 July 1998. I initially placed the spiderling into a plastic box 8 cm high where it fed willingly, food mainly composed of micro-crickets. Sometimes the spider was offered some shredded meal worm, but crickets predominated as prey. The container was sprayed sligthly every day. The spiderling spinned a small nest in the top part of the container and then another moult followed on 13 September 1998, 13 December 1998 and 7 February 1999. After this fifth moult, the spider lost his right leg iv, due to my careless manipulation, when I pinched his leg by a top of box. However, as future development showed, today this leg has re-grown and is indistinguishable from the other legs. Further moults followed on 18 July 1999 and 5 August 1999 - after this moult, I determined the sex as female and placed the spider into an all-glass terrarium with dimension 25 x 25 x 30 cm (length x high x width). I used about 5 cm of substrate, which had high-quality at that time, as a flooring. The back wall was created by sanded polystyrene and I placed two bigger pieces of branch from a fruit tree into the terrarium (I think it was from a plum tree). Further I put a shallow water dish and the spider immediately started to nestle in the terrarium. Next moults: 18 September 1999, 10 January 2000, 22 February 2000, 3 July 2000, 24 January 2001, 13 June 2001 and finally the last one on 20 April 2002. At that time, the female was already nestled in her terrarium. Her body size was about 6 cm and after this exuviation, I started to look for a male.

I got hold of an older male and I put him into the female's terrarium at 21:35 on 9 April 2002. but the male didn't even respond to the courtship of the female and so he was soon killed. On 20 July 2002, I acquired another male. He was young (adult from 5 July 2002), but abnormally small. He built a sperm-web during the evening hours on 18 July 2002 so I placed him into the female's terrarium at 22:50 on 21 July 2002. The female drummed excessively on her web and she is vibrating in courtship. This lasted approximately 10 minutes. However, the male was afraid of the female and was flinching from the female all the time (she was actively chasing him). The male climbed up the wall of the terrarium, from which he fell, and the female killed him. On 5 August 2002, I again bought an older male from my colleague Karel Chwistek. The male was very active, although he was advanced in years. On 13 August 2002, I placed the male into the female's container during the evening hours. The female visibly wanted to mate, but the male was apathetic and he didn't answer to the females advances. The female didn't try to attack the male this time. I took him out from the terrarium. Another attempt was made with the same male on 18 September 2002 and this time the courtship lasted approximately 45 minutes, during which both participants were vibrating and drumming loudly. The male was evidently afraid, as though he was keeping his distance from actual mating. Nevertheless, the male was courting, the female was drumming and stood in a position to allow the male to push his embolus into her epigynum. The male tried to do this during the courtship three times eventually succeeding the fourth time, pushing his embolus into the female's genital opening. At that moment, both of them remained in the entry to female's nest, in a very disadvantageous position for the male. The female started to expel him from the nest and afterwards, she attacked and bit the male. I left him for her as her last meal, because at that time, I was persuaded that this pairing was successful.

On 14 October 2002, I managed to identify the eggsac for a certainty, which the female classically nestled in her retreat. I tried not to disturb the female, because she responded to every small interruption and she immediately took a defensive posture in such a way that she nearly overturned. Also when I disturbed her a little, she hit with her front legs to the ground. At that time, the female spent most of her time in contact with her eggsac. On 23 November 2002, I saw that mites were starting to appear around the sac and that they were moving close to the female. I therefore enticed the female away using A wooden stick in the corner of terrarium, and meanwhile took the eggsac away. There were about 150 nymphs in the second stage of development inside the sac with an average size of 3 cm. I placed the sac with the nymphs into a plastic box and I used damped cotton wool as flooring. I gave two smaller pinkie mice to the female after a few days of rest and she relished both of them. The nymphs were quite large and on 3 December 2002, they started to darken notably. On 11 December 2002, they went through their first moult. After about 10 days, I tried to feed the spiderlings for the first time. Some of them took pre-killed crickets and meal worms. On 20 January, the spiderlings moulted for the second time. I placed about 30 spiderlings separately into film pots and left the rest together. Pterinochilus murinus spiderlings can be left together for a long time, because they are not agressive with one another at all. I plan to leave them together until their fifth moult.

Author: Michal Toran, arachnomania@seznam.cz , www.arachnomania.com

Literature used: František Kovarík, Sklípkani, Madagaskar, Jihlava 1998.



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