European Nursery Web spider
Pisaura mirabilis
Arachnida
COMMON
Stats
- Lifespan
- 1-2 yrs
- Size
- Medium
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Activity
- Diurnal
- Social
- Solitary
- Biome
- Temperate grassland
- Range
- Europe
- Movement
- Walking
- Breeding
- Egg-laying
- Defense
- Camouflage
- Status
- Common
About
The European nursery web spider is famous for the male's courtship ritual of presenting the female with a silk-wrapped insect as a nuptial gift, reducing the risk of being eaten before mating. Females carry their egg sac under their body until hatching, then build a silken nursery tent to shelter the emerging spiderlings.
Life cycle
- 1.egg sacA silk-wrapped egg sac shelters a clutch of eggs until the young are ready to emerge.
- 2.juvenileA spiderling emerges from the egg sac already in miniature adult form and starts catching prey almost immediately.
- 3.subadultA near-adult arachnid molts through several instars, growing larger and developing mature markings.
- 4.adultFully grown after its final molt.
Learn more
Taxonomy
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Arthropoda
- Class
- Arachnida
- Order
- Araneae
- Family
- Pisauridae
- Genus
- Pisaura
- Species
- Pisaura mirabilis