1979] 
Uetz & Burgess — Behavior in M. spinipes 
81 
Figure 1. Metepeira spinipes, compound web. (1) Space web; (2) retreat where 
spider sits, holding signal threads (4) to (3) catching spiral. Mature females may 
construct tiers of egg sacs (5). [Courtesy of Dr. Peter N. Witt, North Carolina 
Division of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services. Used with permission.] 
the colonial space web persists and is elaborated on by the web 
building activities of numerous individuals. The resultant colonial 
web is a mass of interconnected individual webs supporting each 
other, attached at its periphery to the vegetation. The colonies we 
observed contained adults and immatures of indeterminate age and 
wide size variation. 
Metepeira spinipes colonial webs are usually associated with 
microhabitats of a somewhat permanent structure: succulents, dead 
branches, shrubs, man-made objects, etc. In the Tepotzotlan area, 
maguey (Agave sp.) plants were the most common site of M. spi¬ 
nipes colonies. Habitat preferences of this species were examined in 
an area containing a variety of microhabitat types. The null hypoth¬ 
eses that spiders are equally distributed in all microhabitat types, or 
are distributed on the basis of the frequency of occurrence of micro¬ 
habitat types are rejected based on Chi-square tests (Table 1). These 
data suggest that M. spinipes colonies and/or individuals occur 
more frequently in Agave plants than in other microhabitat sites. 
