Dutch spiders Top 5, 2015

This video says about itself:

10 August 2015

Description: This is a video of two orb web garden spiders, Araneus diadematus, mating, showing details of their courtship ritual. The male, the skinnier one in the top left hand corner, approached the female in her web twice. The first attempt failed and he retreated but came back for another try which was successful.

It is quite a long video, so to see the final successful attempt run forward to about 6 minutes. The mating involves a lot of signaling between both female and male by plucking the web strings, swinging the web gently, and when he gets close the male pats the female with his front legs. The female signals back by plucking the web in turn.

It is basically a very complicated dance. When the female is ready to mate she leans out from the web and “presents” herself to the male. Not shown here but after the first round of successful mating the male retreated again but returned to mate again. The video was taken with a DSLR camera hand held so it sometimes drops out of focus a little, but for the most part it is easy to see what is happening.

Today, there were the results of a recent week of counting spiders in the Netherlands.

Almost 5,000 spiders of various species were counted.

Number one in frequency was the diadem spider, aka orb web garden spider.

The rest of the Top 5:

2. Cellar spider

3. Linyphia triangularis

4. Metellina segmentata

5. Domestic house spider