Taxon:
- Class: Arachnida
- Order: Araneae
- Infra-Order: Araneamorph (true spiders)
- Family: Pisauridae
- Genus: Perenethis
- Species: Perenethis sp.
Female
Female characteristics unknown.
Male
About 11mm in body length. Leg span of approximately 30mm diagonally.
Cephalothorax:
Light brown with thick dark band down centre of carapace, from eyes to abdomen, with light stripes running alongside band. Curved dark stripe near edges of carapace. Yellowish chelicerae. Tarsi of pedipalps swollen and dark. Eyes arranged in a squashed X formation.
Abdomen:
Yellowish abdomen that tapers to point near spinnerets, thick dark band down centre with light stripes running alongside. Faint dark lines running down abdomen to spinnerets.
Legs:
Pale yellowish light brown, slight darkening on patella and tibia, darker further on metatarsus and tarsus. Femurs covered in strong dark setae.
ABOUT THE GENUS
Perenethis is a typically free-roaming nursery-web spider. They don’t make webs in which to live, though not all nursery-web spiders are wanderers. When a female Nursery-web spider makes an egg sac, she’ll carry it with her, using her chelicera and pedipalps to keep it close and also bending her pedicel so that her abdomen hugs the egg sac.
She’ll stay like this, not eating, until the spiderlings are almost ready. When that time arrives, she then builds a large web on which she secures the egg sac and the slings hatch and emerge and stay on this web with the mother until they’re ready to leave and brave the world on their own.
The web acts as a nursery for the young ones and thus why Pisaurids are called nursery-web spiders.
Spiders in & around Orania 