Housing:
Most Dipluridae spp. don´t need big containers. The containers, that can be used to keep them can range from a 1 Liter delicup up to a big terrarium.
Small species, like Ischnothele caudata, or Thelechoris striatipes can be kept in small containers like delicups with about 1 Liter content. Those species don´t grow larger than about 2,5cm BL and are therefore well qualified for this way of keeping.
Larger species like Linothele fallax, which can grow up to 5cm BL should be kept in larger containers, like big plasticboxes (5 Liter content minimum) or terrariums from 20cm width up.
The arrangement of the terrarium can be kept very simple. It consists of a 5cm high layer of substrate (50:50 mix of Sand and soil) and a diagonal piece of bark.
The spiders use the hollow space under the bark to build their housing, which ends in several funnels. Because of the high activity on building it´s web the terrarium will fastly be coverd with several layers of white silk.
It´s recommended to house spiderlings from 1cm BL on in their final housing. Experience shows, that spiderlings, which were kept in too small housing didn´t show the same growrate as their siblings, which were kept in larger containers.
Feeding of Dipluridae normally causes no major problems, the spiders subdue nearly everything, that moves in their web. So it might happen, that spiders with a bodylength of about 1cm catch a grown up cricket. Only when the bodylength of the offered feeding animal exceeds the double of it´s own bodylength the spider retreats to its housing.
To ensure the spider gets enough water it´s recommended to sprinkles the web with water twice a week. A permanent cup with water is not necessary.
Breeding:
The captive breeding of Dipluridae spp. is not very difficult. Under same terms of conditions while raising the spiderling the males and females moult to maturity nearly at the same time, but the females are not grown up to their full size at this time. Shortly after its maturity moult the male starts building a sperm web, to fill his bulbi with sperm.
For mating carefully let the male enter the container of the female. When it contacts the females web it starts to mate by beating on the ground with ist pedipalps. The female now comes to the entrance of her funnel and starts beating on the ground too. The male moves towards the female while still beating on the ground. When he reaches the female he starts to beat the female with his leg I (leg-tapping), whereupon the female straightens up and puts itself into mating position (Linothele fallax nearly lays on ist back while mating). The male inserts his bulbi and transfers his sperm.
About 2-4 weeks after mating (depending on state of feeding) the female begins to prepare the building of her eggsac. She builds an opaque web in ist housing. Then she aspirates a horizontal layer of web, which looks like a mat. Shortly before building the eggsac the female closes the entrances to her funnel with silk. Now she moves onto the horizontal web and lays her eggs. The abdomen of the spider shrinks very much while doing that, because she used most of her feeding she got in the weeks before for producing the eggs, which filled most of her abdomen. Because of the weight of the eggs the mat droops down and builts a funnel from which the eggs can´t roll out. Then the female covers the eggs with several layers of silk, so the eggs are covered with silk from all sides. The eggsac is put centrally in the housing of the female and she sits on top of it to protect it most time.
The number of eggs from an eggsac of Ischnothele caudata with aproximately 1,5cm BL was 80. Some bigger growing Dipluridae might best this number.
Four to six weeks after laying the eggsac the spiderlings start to hatch. It´s recommended to seperate the eggsac from the female before the spiderlings emerge from it, because the little spiderlings are very difficult to get out of the mothers web.
When hatching the spiderlings are very small (I. caudata about 1-2mm BL) so they need to be fed with small feeding like Drosophila or micro crickets in the first time. But they grow up very fast and reach maturity after about 1 year.
I´ve kept 2 adult males and 5 adult females of I. caudata together in a container with 30cm length, 30cm width and 40cm height. The spiders built individual webs, which are mostly attached to each other.
I was able to observe, that mature males leave their webs to mate with females of the surrounding webs from time to time. Stunningly they never move on longer distances, they only mate with females, whose webs are build in a circumcircle of 15cm around the web of the male.
When feeding the group of Ischnothele caudata I was able to observe, that the female catches prey to feed their offspring. I was also able to observe, that about 15-20 Spiderlings of Ischnothele caudata were feeding on a male, which was killed by the female a few minutes before.
Habitats
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Habitat of Euagrus chisoseus at Falcon Lake, TX, USA
Photos: Graham Criglow
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Habitat of Euagrus chisoseus at Bulverde, TX, USA
Photos: Graham Criglow
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Habitat of Diplura sp. and Linothele sp. Cordillera de la Costa, Venezuela
Photos: Boris Striffler
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Webs of Dipluridae at Belize
Photos: Eddy Hijmensen
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Web of Ischnothele sp. at Yaxja
Photos: Eddy Hijmensen
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Habitat of Dipluridae at Tikal
Photos: Eddy Hijmensen
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