1971] 
Rovner — Wolf Spiders 
157 
mating, females which had undergone one to several bouts of tying 
down were only slightly hampered by the scant threads on their 
legs and readily freed themselves. 
Most of the normal males copulating with females that had one 
or both copulatory pores sealed performed an atypical behavior which 
I have termed a “pseudo-insertion”. This occurred when one of the 
palpal scrapes (insertion attempts) on an unavailable side resulted 
in complete expansion of the hematodocha, even though the palp 
was no longer in contact with the female’s body. Synchronously with 
the hematodochal expansion, the palp was lifted dorsad, sometimes 
to a relatively high position (with the palpal femur about 45 0 above 
the horizontal plane). Leg spine erection accompanied hematodochal 
expansion, as in normal insertions. The palp was lowered ventrad 
(and the leg spines dropped) during the subsequent hematodochal 
collapse. Pseudo-insertion duration averaged 15.5 sec (N = 20). 
Pseudo-insertions began to occur during a copulation after the male 
had made a number of visits to an unavailable side of the female. Dur- 
ing each visit males made from one to ten (usually from two to five) 
attempts to insert. A pseudo-insertion usually occurred after live or 
fewer attempts; in some cases later in copulation, the first attempt 
during a visit to one side resulted in a pseudo-insertion. In many 
cases if the hematodocha began expansion after partial engagement 
of the embolus in the paraffin seal, expansion would continue to com- 
pletion after the palp slipped away from the epigynum. In other 
instances the palpal tarsus would swing down to the base of the 
female’s leg IV and, meeting resistance there, give rise to a pseudo- 
insertion. The number of pseudo-insertions performed during such 
pairings ranged from one to seventeen. 
Two males lacking one palp and having difficulty inserting the 
available palp showed pseudo-insertions, as well as courtship and 
tying down. Males having one or both palps fixed dorsad did not 
perform pseudo-insertions with their treated palps. 
A behavior probably related to the mechanism underlying pseudo- 
insertions was also seen in the males which were paired with females 
having one or both copulatory pores sealed. It occurred while the 
male was resting on one side of the female after a series of insertion 
attempts. (Many of these attempts involved the male’s leaning steeply 
and scraping his palp much further posterior than the female’s 
epigynum, sometimes thereby contacting her spinnerets.) During this 
resting period, while the male held his palp near his face, slow and 
weak pulsations were evident in the genital bulb. During this “throb- 
bing” the hematodocha was not visible. Partial, synchronous leg 
spine erections accompanied the genital bulb pulsations. 
