Nachdruck verboten. 

 Ubersetzungsrecht vorbehalte^} . 



Sense of sight, courtship and mating in Dugesiella 

 hentzi (Girard), a Theraphosid spider from Texas. 



By 



Alexander Petrunkevitch, Ph. D. 



With Plates 10—11 and 4 fignres in the text. 



There seems to be sufficient evidence tliat the courtship in those 

 Spiders of the suborder Araneae verae, which make iio snares and 

 hiint their prey. depends mainly upon their sense of sight. Although 

 MoNTGOMEEY sought to ascHbe the leadiiig- role to the sense of 

 touch, this view finds no confirmation in experiments on blinded 

 Spiders, which were described years ago by Mr. and Mrs. Peckham. 

 It is easy to observe that male jumping spiders (Ättidae), admirable 

 as an object for experiments on account of their love dances, do not 

 approach the females and do not notice them at all so long as their 

 eyes remain covered with paint. Direct observations of the court- 

 ship in spiders with good sense of sight, such as Lycosidae, Pisauridae, 

 Oxijopidae, SaUicidae and Dijsderidae. show that the male watches 

 the behaviour of the female attentively, now approaching her, now 

 receding if she shows signs of anger and assumes a threatening 

 attitude. The old story that the female attacks and devours the 

 male after the coitus is iinished, is still to be found in a good many 

 textbooks, but it is very far from the truth. It may occasionally 

 happen that a female kills a male, but such cases are rather rare 

 exceptions to the general rule. On the other band, we find males 

 and females living peaceably together during the mating period. This 



Zool. Jahrb. XXXI. Abt. f. Syst. 24 



