Removed_2815
02-25-04, 12:00 AM
Well, looks can certainly be deceiving, I had no idea there were this many eggs in a Black Widow egg sac. This is a picture of my most recent dissection and egg count of a Latrodectus hesperus egg sac:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rbolton1/Folder/Eggs.JPG
I was estimating a couple hundred eggs were in her egg sacs until I decided to put the picture in an editing program. I placed a black dot over each egg as I inputted it into a counter, grand total = 500 eggs! Yikes! Hard to believe so many eggs can be crammed into such a tiny sac (approx. 1 cubic centimeter).
Anyway, the egg sac that I am currently hatching out appears to be moving (after 28 days) so I can only assume that the eggs are hatching. I have read that only 1-12 spiderlings emerge from the egg sac due to cannibalism, I am hoping this is the case (I would rather deal with a dozen or so little spiders than 500 barely macroscopic spiderlings).
Cheers,
Ryan
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rbolton1/Folder/Eggs.JPG
I was estimating a couple hundred eggs were in her egg sacs until I decided to put the picture in an editing program. I placed a black dot over each egg as I inputted it into a counter, grand total = 500 eggs! Yikes! Hard to believe so many eggs can be crammed into such a tiny sac (approx. 1 cubic centimeter).
Anyway, the egg sac that I am currently hatching out appears to be moving (after 28 days) so I can only assume that the eggs are hatching. I have read that only 1-12 spiderlings emerge from the egg sac due to cannibalism, I am hoping this is the case (I would rather deal with a dozen or so little spiders than 500 barely macroscopic spiderlings).
Cheers,
Ryan