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Male-female pairs and mating behavior in Misumena

Does anyone know about the mating behavior of Misumena vatia? I recently photographed a female/male pair with the male “riding” on the back of the female

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I found what I strongly suspect is the same pair the day before (in exactly the same bunch of daisies); of course I cannot prove they are identical but assuming they were the same couple, their pairing seems to be surprisingly long lasting. Bugguide has other similar images of paired Misumena so this must happen quite often.



The pair I watched did not appear to be actively mating however, and in none of the other pictures was the male beneath the female in a mating postion,and so I was wondering if this is something else, perhaps mate guarding for example, or resting between copulations. It seems quite a dangerous thing for the male to do, since there are also pictures in the guide of female Misumena feeding on other female Misumena as well as other unrelated spiders

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I haven’t been able to find much information about mating behaviors in Misumena and would be interested to know a lot more about what is happening here.
Thanks.
Andrew

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It's very possible the male is guarding the female, as you say, to prevent other males from mating with her. An interesting experiment would be to put a single female and her ride-along male in a container with several other males and see what happens.

A good, very detailed book on the life history of M. vatia is available through Amazon. Here is a BG review, with a link to the book:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/248610

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