Vol. XII. December, 1906. No. i 



BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 



THE OVIPOSITION, COCOONING AND HATCHING 

 OF AN ARANEAD, THERIDIUM TEPIDARIORUM 



C. KOCH. 1 



THOS. H. MONTGOMERY, JR. 



During the course of collecting a series of accurately timed 

 stages of the eggs of one of our most familiar spiders, the 

 Theridiuin tcpidariornni, I had occasion to accumulate quite a 

 number of observations upon the reproductive habits. Pub- 

 lished accounts of such habits in spiders are very few, there is 

 much still unknown, so that it seemed worth while to write up 

 these notes since they are the most extensive yet made upon any 

 single species. 



In an earlier contribution 2 I presented an account of this 

 species along with others, and described the moulting, copula- 

 tion, sperm-induction by the male, cocooning and care of the 

 young. I then described three cases of cocooning, and timed 

 the sequence of cocoons for eight females. 



The present observations were made at Woods Hole, Mass., 

 from the fifth to the twenty-sixth of August of the past summer. 

 An unusually large colony of these spiders was found upon an 

 old stone wall in a wood, to which they had probably strayed 

 from some buildings adjacent to one end of the wall. About 

 the first of August the spiders were beginning to form their first 

 cocoons, and upon each of most of the webs of females one or 

 more males were present. Two or three weeks later most of 

 the males had disappeared. My previous study showed that 



1 Contributions from the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Texas, No. 76. 



2 "Studies on the Habits of Spiders, particularly those of the Mating Period," 

 Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1903. 



