. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. Zoology. Revision of Uloboridae • Opell 449. ^^"^'^Sa^T- Plate 2. A. Zosis geniculatus female spinning cnbellate silk. B. Cribellate silk strands of Uloborus penicillatus female. C. Retrolateral view of Philoponella republicana female first patella showing unsclerotized notch (left) bordering lyriform organs. D. First tarsal organ of Zosis geniculatus female. spider grasps the prey with its palpal claws and begins to feed. Members of this family, lacking poison glands, both kill and digest prey by pouring digestive enzyme
. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. Zoology. Revision of Uloboridae • Opell 449. ^^"^'^Sa^T- Plate 2. A. Zosis geniculatus female spinning cnbellate silk. B. Cribellate silk strands of Uloborus penicillatus female. C. Retrolateral view of Philoponella republicana female first patella showing unsclerotized notch (left) bordering lyriform organs. D. First tarsal organ of Zosis geniculatus female. spider grasps the prey with its palpal claws and begins to feed. Members of this family, lacking poison glands, both kill and digest prey by pouring digestive enzymes onto it. The prey's thick silk wrapping becomes transparent as it ab- sorbs these enzymes and the extreme thickness of this covering may be useful for its absorptive properties rather than strictly for prey restraint. Uloborids do not use their chelicerae to pierce or knead prey and require as much as three hours to feed on a 5 to 6-mm-long beetle. Feeding, though slow, is thorough and when complete, only the prey's exo- skeleton remains. Convex eggsacs of Polenecia and Hyp- tiotes are form-fitted to and nearly indis- tinguishable from the surfaces of twigs on which thev are constructed (Comstock, 1913; Scheffer, 1905; Wiehle, 1931). Members of the genera Uloborus, Zosis, Philoponella, and Miagrammopes con- struct suspended, stellate to cylindrical eggsacs. Philoponella tingena and Zosis geniculatus first construct a horizontal silk platform in their webs, deposit a cluster of 40 to 80 eggs under this plat- form, and then spin a form-fitting, convex covering around this egg mass, attaching its margins to those of the upper platform. Such eggsacs usually have five to eight marginal points which represent attach- ment sites of lines supporting the plat- form. These observations agree with those of Uloborus diversus made by Eberhard (1969). Zosis geniculatus leaves its thin-walled, pink to light purple egg-. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images
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Keywords: ., bookauthorharvarduniversity, bookcentury1900, booksubjectzoology
