1973 ] Benforado & Kistler — Araneus diadematus 9 1 
cocoon were placed in a separate rearing box. The spiderlings were 
kept in these boxes, living on a communal web with a constant sup- 
ply of loose gnats in the box, until they began to build individual 
webs approximately three weeks after hatching. As each animal built 
her first web she was removed from the rearing box and placed in 
an individual glass tube, approximately 1X7 cm, with the ends 
of the tube stoppered with cotton. From the time the animals were 
placed in the tubes until onset of the experiment they were fed ap- 
proximately 10-15 gnats per week, by placing the gnats in the tube 
with the spiderling. The animals were watered by wetting the cot- 
ton with water daily. 
distribution: Seven weeks after hatching the two sets of spider- 
lings were each separated into three equal groups by means of a 
random numbers chart. No attempt was made to distribute males 
and females evenly. Although the growth (body weight) of males 
and females differs, it has been shown that the early growth of both 
sexes is alike (Witt et al., 1972). Because of the short duration of 
the experiment and the difficulty in identifying male spiders before 
the last molt, distribution of males and females was left to chance. 
At the time of initial grouping the two sets of spiderlings num- 
bered twenty and thirty respectively. It was decided to feed each 
of the three groups of each set according to a different feeding sched- 
ule: one group every day, one group twice weekly, and one group 
every ten days. Thus there were six groups, one for each set of 
offspring on each feeding schedule. After one week of this procedure, 
however, it was decided because of the small size of the groups to 
reduce the number of schedules to two, and the middle /schedule was 
dropped and its members distributed randomly between the lighter 
and heavier-fed groups. 
Data for animals that died or escaped during the course of the 
experiment were removed, so figures represent only animals observed 
for the duration of the experiment. 
weighing: Each spider in the heavy-fed groups was weighed once 
a week, to 0.1 mg, while animals in the light-fed groups were 
weighed on the day of feeding and the day after feeding. 
web analysis: After eleven days of controlled differential feeding 
in the tubes, the spiders were transferred to aluminum and glass 
laboratory cages, 50 X 50 X 10 cm. At this time the animals were 
eight weeks old. From this time on the spiders began to build webs. 
Photographs of webs were taken daily and analyzed (Reed et al., 
1965). Daily records of web building were kept and the webs were 
