Eucratoscelus pachypus

[Jimmy Dale]

Has anybody bred E. pachypus. I'd be interested to hear from anybody with experience with this species as i have just acquired a mature male for a female of mine and am looking for any breeding tips. Thanks.

[Mikhail F. Bagaturov]

Hey Jimmy!

You're lucky guy. I'm and I know many people searching for this species adult males...
As for the breeding them You can see this page I've made recently, but sure You should read BTS journal article by Richard Gallon!
I believe also Martin Gamache should write his article very soon too, all has already done it.
See link: http://tarantulas.tropica.ru/en/node/617

[Colin D Wilson]

Very nicely laid out website Mikhail, have just browsed through it all.
I found the sections on Evolution & Anatomy particularly interesting and will read all sections fully later when i have a spare hour.

[Jimmy Dale]

Very nice site Mikhail as Colin said.

I was very lucky with these as a was having trouble finding a male so recently bought 5 'spiderlings' hoping i could rear a male out of them. 4 of them appeared to be subadult when they arrived. One was a mature male!

Tonight i have just mated them for the first time. As far as i could tell there was one successful insertion after four attempts lasting eight minutes in total.

I have Richard Gallon's article but even he points out that husbandry for this species is still in the experimental stages so i am still on the look out for any advice. I have not seen much consideration of anual cycles in many of the articles i have read and am wondering if seasonal changes in temperature and humidity may be the key to succes with this species in captivity. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has any ideas.

I'll keep adding to this thread if i find anything else useful.

[Colin D Wilson]

Jimmy, keep us informed mate, definitley !!

I may be stating the obvious here, but regarding annual cycles, you cant get much closer than searching the net for the yearly temps and humidity for the country / area the spider is indigenous to and follow that as close as you can.

I'm running a low grade experiment with 4 pairs of mature rosea's (not enough to form a completely accurate experiment i know) 2 are in a constant temp and fairly constant humidity, and two are subjected to seasonal variations in a seperate location, at the moment the seasonal subjects are showing more general activity though it's only been running short term at the mo.

[Jimmy Dale]

I'll be keen to know how that turns out Colin. From keeping snakes the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of breeding is cycling. Often this doesn't seem to be the case with many inverts, so it's nice to know that people are considering it.
I've found lots of data on annual rainfall and temp in Tanzania, but little info on collecting localities for E. pachypus - this would be very helpful when considering how to heat / cool. Tanzania is i think the largest country in Africa and so presumably more variable in terms of weather - particularly at different altitudes. Does anybody know exactly where most of the W/C specimens of pachypus come from?

[Colin D Wilson]

With the size of Tanzania, i wouldn't be surprised if there were several mini climates within it, as you say "at differing altitudes", bit of a puzzler that.
Had snakes most of my life too and at the mo my youngest son has a breeding trio of kenyan sand boas, cool em off, feed em, don't feed em...what a palavour, he seems to be on top of it though.
I'll let you know what the outcome is with the Rosea's.
Just had a quick look for w/c info on the net and it's not exactly abundant is it?...will keep looking in my spare time.

[Jimmy Dale]

Yeah, there's a real lack of info on collection location. I've managed to find loads on taxonomy but nothing on the ecology of the species. As R. Gallon said in his article, there has been little success with this species - which i think is almost certainly down to lack of availibility on ecological and behavioural data.

What would be great is gprs co-odrinates if possible but as with many things i expect the collectors keep this information to themselves.

[Colin D Wilson]

Reference collectors keeping info like this to themselves...i think i would too to be honest!!

Anyway..
Everywhere i re-route my search on the net i always end up either at Richards Journal or the 2007 Catalogue of life which states the distribution as.........yep you've guessed it..... 364900 square miles of Tanzania!! the only additional info on here is a taxonomic scrutiny in 2005 (totally useless to this quest)

[Mikhail F. Bagaturov]

Hello All!
Thanks for You kind words regarding my site and as for locale data I only can tell You the one we have here from the actual importer - the info he reaches from exporter from Tanzania about locale they'we collected in the wild he was told - the Dodoma region...
You see... it is useless

The same problem I have with my Cordylus beraducci I've asked and been told the Massai region on the border Kenya-Tanzania... that's all. Fortunately this species has the decent morphological detailes for correct identification.

[Colin D Wilson]

A bit of research shows that the Dodoma region (combining all seperate districts) equates to 41,310 sq km, 5% of Tanzania.

Some info on Climate,Vegetation and Agro-Ecological Zones..

http://www.tanzania.go.tz/regions/dodoma/zones.htm

Gives rainfall months and temp changes so should a good starting point Jimmy.