a blue P.subfusca????

[Ray Gabriel]

I think this is a good place to split this thread mods

if you are in and line breeding

No one that i know of is "line breeding", we still dont know enough about theraphosids to get them to breed all the time, to even try it, and look at all the work you would have to do. mate 1 pair, rear all the young and then breed the best pair for that particular trait you are working on, lets say size. But as females get bigger with age then how do you know you are chosing what is going to be the biggest female before the males die?

Next point we dont even know if mating a female will stop her growing as all the growth going to produce young is being diverted away from size growth.

OH and at this stage i should point out that older bigger females tend to be male munchers and not reproducers.

and crossing high and lowland subfuscas to gat a variation and selectivly breeding the varient you want, this is termed selective breeding. could this be termed a mutation????

I never said that to cross them to get a variation, So using the definition of high and low land subfuscas we have been given, IE one is light coloured and one is dark, as as Thomas Froik has pointed out you get both colour forms from the same eggsac, where is the selective breeding?

Selective breeding is the same as line brreding = breeding for a specific chosen by man trait

another question. hybridising is no kosher is it?

A Kosh is a simple style of club normally used for mugging people i dont understand what you are saying.

there is speculation

Yes and that is all it is. there is no proof

OK here goes, the people who are saying its different are the ones who spent alot of money on these as they were told they were something different.

The people who are saying they are not different are the people who have had subfusca for years, examined dead specimens, compared specimens against the type, and who have been in the field collecting them.

Who would you believe?

that low and highland subfuscas my not be of the same sp and may be as i have seen quoted P. bara

And who is saying this?

the people who are saying its different are the ones who spent alot of money on these as they were told they were something different.

OR

The people who are saying they are not different are the people who have had subfusca for years, examined dead specimens, compared specimens against the type, and who have been in the field collecting them.

Now then, for those people that (being the instant Poecilotheria experts they are, as this is not the first time i have heard this, and this is not directed at you wesley) should know better, the TYPE of P. bara was examined by Peter Kirk (another person who has studied Poecilotheria for years and collected in the field etc) and found to be the SAME and ill say it again again SAME species as P. subfusca so they were synonymised.

Now this means that P. bara can NEVER be a species again, so why are some MORONS trying to lead people on by saying it is still valid????? (again not you Wesley)

or uniformis or possable an unclassified sp, so until the taxonomists are sure why ae you suggesting keep them in mixed groups?

Well at present the taxonomists ARE SURE as no dead specimens have so far been presented of this "lowland" form YET, there are hopefully specimens of the dark form being packed as i speak, so as they are the SAME SPECIES and we ahve reliable information that both come from the same eggsac....................where is the problem with mixed groups?, they are born that way.

Ill let everyone else work out P. uniformis

i would really love to see the evidance for the Lycosids.

Cannot find/ cant be assed looking more, it was in an article in the New York Times? October 2003 I think, try google ing Lycosa mate preferance



Ray

[Ray Gabriel]

Just a thought, which is just as viable as an undecribed species, could these be a stable hybrid?

Why not?

Ray

[Chris Sainsbury]

Now this means that P. bara can NEVER be a species again, so why are some MORONS trying to lead people on by saying it is still valid????? (again not you Wesley)

Hi Ray
I hope this is not directed at me for asking this question :-

Just out of interest. If (and from what I can make out from all this it is a bigish IF) this "low" or "High" version of P. subfusca did turn out to be a new species, would it not be possible that it could infact be what was described as P. bara before it got synominized with P. subfusca? That being the case, wouldn't it have to be reinstated rather than get a new name?

It was after all just an honest to god question and in no way did I try and lead anyone anywhere!

If it was aimed at me then I say b*****ks to you, as I would rather be a MORON than someone who was afraid to ask if they didn't know.

Cheers
Chris

[Ray Gabriel]

Hi Ray
I hope this is not directed at me for asking this question :-Chris

WOOPS no i dindnt even see you had said that, there are a few "Europeans" saying this though, and like i said was not the first time i have heard this, i actually get emails saying "is this really P. bara"................................

So no its people who are TELLING people they are P. bara i was aiming that at.

Must go DS9 is on

Ray

[Chris Sainsbury]

Fair enough Ray but the b*****ks must stay, for being a trekie I'm afraid to say lol
Only jokeing, go on enjoy your program just don't talk about it ok lol.
All the best
Chris

[Alexandre BONACCORSO]

Hello,

just to answer Chris :

That was interesting about the mating attempt, but I can't help feeling that the same kind of thing happens across the board where spiders are concerned. It is after all not all that uncommon for a female to refuse one male and mate with another different one a day or so later, even when it is 100% sure of all the same species are involved. Also with these being so closely related in the Poecilotheria sence of view (I just persume this btw) I can't see them being a different species as a reason for them not mating, after all isn't there a good number of Poecilotheria crosses knocking about in the hobby all ready? I have even heard of a subfusca x rufilata cross, so I find it hard to buy into that reason.

Yes, I must agree with you.

And thanks for other informations here and there.

Best regards,
Alex

[Simon Goldsborough]

Hi Alex

Thats good news. I hope it can clear some of this up.
That was interesting about the mating attempt, but I can't help feeling that the same kind of thing happens across the board where spiders are concerned. It is after all not all that uncommon for a female to refuse one male and mate with another different one a day or so later, even when it is 100% sure of all the same species are involved. Also with these being so closely related in the Poecilotheria sence of view (I just persume this btw) I can't see them being a different species as a reason for them not mating, after all isn't there a good number of Poecilotheria crosses knocking about in the hobby all ready? I have even heard of a subfusca x rufilata cross, so I find it hard to buy into that reason.


According to Simon they have been crossed though?:-




All the best
Chris

how did you here about the rufilata x subfusca you make out like i told you about them there was 2 people who fell to this old rufilata male being passed off as a lowlad subfusca i was loaned male that was supossed to be a lowland form subfusca by Martin Dratva i put it in with 1 of my females after removing a old male subfusca that she was not interested in breeding with the day this so called fresh lowland male arrived i removed the old subfusca male and put in the so called fresh lowland male they was togeher for around 4-5 weeks before i removed the male then i noticed it was no subfusca male but a old rufilata male i contacted the martin dratva off the t store who sent me the male and a switch had been made when he loaned it out and he didnt even try to track down his male and find out who swapped the male my thoughts is he sent me the old rufilata by misstake and thought it would be easyier to pass the blame on to who ever loaned the male , a few days went by and i had a 7.5inch fresh male lowland so i thought it wont hurt to see if she will mate i waited for a sperm web then put the my big freshly mature lowland male in with the female he was tapping away for 4 days produced 2 sperm webs in her tank then she tried to kill him on the 5th day so i removed the male the female wouldnt feed for 5-6 weeks from removing my fresh lowland male then she started to eat every thing i gave hershe produced a sac in november removed in december to find it 100% fertile not 1 bad egg they all moulted in to slings a few days ago and look to be subfusca not a cross rufilata x subfusca i have 2 subfusca slings from a sac i removed a few days after the other sac so i have subfusca slings and rufilata slings to compare them too and they are the exact same as the 2 subfusca slings from the bad egg sac thats just a few days older the rufilata slings are a lot bigger in leg span than subfusca slings , so far in the uk there is only regalis x fasciata hybrid pokies i have 2 females in my collection 1 was mated with a fasciata male before i got them so we will see if her sac is fertile in a few weeks , i woudnt expect a hybrid sac to be 100% fertile i do know there was a sac produced by this old rufilata male to a lowland subfusca female only a few eggs where fertile and soon died off as they moulted only 8 made it to spiderlings none of them fed and died a few weeks later none survived , in a month or 2 i will 100% know for certain if mine are subfusca and not hybrids , it would have been interesting if they did survive to see what they look like for future refferance in case any more misstakes are made and go by unnoticed

[Nicola Dolby]

Thanks for the help Simon. I've got a lowland male available for breeding if anyone is interested! By the way, at the risk of being lynched, whats a Poecilotheria bara?

[Alexandre BONACCORSO]

whats a Poecilotheria bara?

Hello,
You have your answer here (Ray G.) :

the TYPE of P. bara was examined by Peter Kirk (another person who has studied Poecilotheria for years and collected in the field etc) and found to be the SAME and ill say it again again SAME species as P. subfusca so they were synonymised.

[Nicola Dolby]

Thanks Alexandre!

[wesley flower]

Thomas Froik has pointed out you get both colour forms from the same eggsacRay

was the male seen? if so was he the same varient as the female?

Selective breeding is the same as line brreding = breeding for a specific chosen by man trait Ray

true line breeding is a form of selective breeding but close relatives are not used ie not mother-son or sibling mmatings more cousins and auntie- nephew etc

A Kosh is a simple style of club normally used for mugging people i dont understand what you are saying.Ray

sorry kosher is a hebrew word meaning fit to describe a peice of food as 'fit' to eat (jewish dietry laws). i used the word to illustrate that crossing is not good and possible against the law of nature in some humans eyes.

OK here goes, the people who are saying its different are the ones who spent alot of money on these as they were told they were something different.

The people who are saying they are not different are the people who have had subfusca for years, examined dead specimens, compared specimens against the type, and who have been in the field collecting them.

Who would you believe?Ray

prehaps people who are oppinionating should state that and not say as if fact.

And who is saying this?Ray

i read it somewhere whilst doing some research not too sure where.

Now then, for those people that (being the instant Poecilotheria experts they are, as this is not the first time i have heard this, and this is not directed at you wesley) should know better, the TYPE of P. bara was examined by Peter Kirk (another person who has studied Poecilotheria for years and collected in the field etc) and found to be the SAME and ill say it again again SAME species as P. subfusca so they were synonymised.

Now this means that P. bara can NEVER be a species again, so why are some MORONS trying to lead people on by saying it is still valid????? (again not you Wesley)Ray

thank you ray

Cannot find/ cant be assed looking more, it was in an article in the New York Times? October 2003 I think, try google ing Lycosa mate preferance Ray

i will have a look later thanks

[Ray Gabriel]

Ok lets go back to the very beggining and trace the story so far:

Are you sitting comfortably? then i will beginn:

Once Upon a Time in a Galaxy Far, Far away
There lived a trader in the offspring of the goddess Arachnae
This trader made friends throughout the Galaxy and was thought good by many people.
Then slowly it was discovered that many of the offspring off Arachnae sold by this trader were not as they were supposed to be, rare Haplopelma costale were found to be Haplopelma “sp” (possibly Bach Ma, desired by some but not others, and certainly not as valuable as H. costale) but when this was pointed out to the trader no recompense was ever offered!, the traders price list was found to be the same as to traders as to the public, and not reduced as should be to other traders, so the other traders could not profit from buying from the trader, the trader started claiming that confirmed sexed females were turning into males so when asked to return the males and a share of any resulting young from the males activities the trader vanished, only to reappear claiming the male had died but also asking where the replacement female was? And even after a replacement female was given no recompense or replacement male was surrendered. At this same time as many of the traders friends were suddenly awakening to the traders miss dealings the trader started to sell more offspring of the goddess arachnae this time Monocentrophus balfouri for 250 Euros each, many people found this to be to much money so did not buy any, but after a couple of months the people were surprised to discover that the REAL price for these M. balfouri should only have been 150 Euros each, and that the trader was once again trying to pull a fast one on the people even his friends and chucking a 100Euro mark up on each spiderling. Deciding enough was enough and his greed was getting to much his friends, decided the friendship was over and they would not deal with the trader anymore as they felt he was not to be trusted. Their new beliefs about trusting the trader were realised when they found on a website another trader had blacklisted him. If anyone knows of any other of the miss deads of this trader please let us all know so we can all be fully aware. The trader slowly started fading into the back ground as fewer and fewer people continued to trade with him but before he vanished rubbing his lobes he decided on one last sale.

Meantime on another planet called Arachnoboards, people were asking the usual questions and members of the “old guard” (the experienced people in between the new people and the elders) would reply with the knowledge they had gained. One newbie asked which one was the largest of the Poecilotheria. old guard Soren replied, explaining that P. subfusca was the largest but at that time had been wrongly identified as P. bara ( which had previously been synonymised by the elder Peter Kirk), and came from the lowland forests of the planet Sri Lanka. Further attempts to find this species in its old forests around Matale were attempted by elders and old guard alike, even talking with the wood cutters they found that they had not been seen for many years and that the forests they once lived in were mostly no more, the closest forests had P. fasciata, going all the way anti clockwise to the hot tropical area where P. fasciata is replaced by P. ornata, and then further round the highlands in the centre until P. ornata was replaced by P. pedersenni (named after another of the old guard who had been to Sri Lanka many times and was known as a great field worker).

Many of the newbies asked if this big form still existed, and was available for the newbies to keep and nurture. And this is where either by good luck or coincidence the trader made what appears to be his final fare well. On the last few pricelists posted up by the trader after the thread on plant arachnoboards where old guard Soren had helped the newbie, suddenly P. subfusca “lowland form” appeared. Many of the old guard were suspicious of this straight away, as they remembered the earlier dealings of the trader, and did not trust him, the difference was said to be that the “lowland form” was lighter than the “normal” form of P. subfusca, but many of the old guard, people like Nicolai Pedersenn, Thomas Froik who had seen P. subfusca in the wild (and were amongst the first to have young of them knew that both light and dark forms were found in the same eggsac) tried to tell this to the newbies but were ignored. All they wanted to do was pass on their advice as they frequently did, but the newbies claimed to know better, many had only heard of the “Red Poecilotheria” a ruse to make money which had been replicated by elder Gallon and old guard Gabriel using the juice from the root of the beet, and found to be false the newbies had heard the fable of the “bleu P. ornata” which was then shown to be closer to the real thing by Smith the elder, who also pointed out that the taxonomical feature was having a dot on the femur NOT the size of the dot. Many of these things upset the newbies as either in their attempts to show their knowledge or gain wealth these fakes were disproved.

But alas neither the elders or the old guard could convince the newbies they were mistaken, and friction rose between them, many of the newbies decided this must be a new species as it was a different colour (forgetting that colour is not a txonomical tool) some even tried to claim that Kirk the elder was mistaken in his examination and comparison of the two holotypes of P. bara and P. subfusca, and must have missed seeing that both had completely dark undersides of the legs, when he examined them in the research area of the Natural History Museum in the ancient city of Londinium. This made some of the old guard sad, as they deemed some of the newbies as friends and could see this friendship slipping away. But Smith the elder intervened and said ” let me see dead specimens and if it is new I will name it in your honour” so the old guard pulled together and found they had dead specimens of the dark form and supplied these to Smith the elder in an attempt to try to heal the rift between the newbies and the old guard, but strangely enough no specimens of the reputed “lowland” form seemed to appear. Rumour went that this Lowland form was from the knuckles forested mountains, which are next to Kandy the Capital of the central highlands of Sri Lanka and many miles away from the lowland area of Matale. And still no offers of “lowland” form are forth coming.

To this day the last poison from the trader is still splitting the old guard and the newbies, no one has heard from the trader in a long time and many feel this is a good thing. The old guard are still sorrowfull about their newbie friends as they can see that when this is resolved. The newbies will hide away in their shame, and shrink from the friendship of the old guard just as those of the “blue P. ornate” seem to have done.

But the story will not end here as the findings of Smith the elder have yet to be revealed, so until then………………….

TO BE CONTINUED

[wesley flower]

ray your a bloody idiot lmao (ment as a joke nothing personal you might actually be a nice chap)

[Mark Pennell]

Ray
Wise words young padiwan, the force is indeed strong with you!



Mark
P.S Nice use of the word old guard, can I claim that as my invention - please

[Malcolm Potts]

Excellent thread - very interesting.

I have specimens from both "forms" - and I have posted many pictures on the forums. I have also used the terms lowland and highland whilst posting these pictures - purely because that is the names I came by these spiders. I cannot comment further on this as I don't know their original source location. Plus I am in no way an expert - I just like these spiders and own quite a few....lol.

I will now post some of my own peronal observations.

I have many subfusca all bought as slings - including some communal groups of up to 15 individuals - mainly of the "lowland" form. Interestingly - by far the most expensive of which are a couple of "normal" slings bought from Ray - dealers making money???

There seems to be a great lack of information about captive care of P.subfusca. (or perhaps I am looking in the wrong places?) My main sources are BTS journals and the articles written by Jacobi in Arachnoculture.

I have tried keeping "lowland" subfusca in cool humid conditions as described by Jacobi - and they go into "hibernation" - they almost stop feeding all together and burry under the peat - huddled together in a ball. "Normal" form subfusca that I keep do not do this - and feed freely and behave like any other Poec. Once kept at higher temperatures these "lowland" subfusca - also behave normally and feed.

I have also tried to keep "normal" form subfusca at higher temps and dryer - with disasterous consequences - death.

So I am not saying that these are two different species - and I only use the terms "highland" and "lowland" as that is what I aquired them as. However, my own experiences with these two differently marked spiders is that they require different husbandry - and do not do well when their conditions are reversed.

This could just be due to adaptation to captivity -or could indicate a difference between the spiders?? I don't claim to know.

I have also noted that there is very little variation in markings on the "lowland" form with all members of my groups looking almost identical, even very little difference between male and female dorsally. Females having whiter knees.

Another observation whilst keeping subfusca - is that they seem to thrive better whilst kept communally than when kept individually.

I have a communal group of adult male "lowland form" subfusca - if you would like any for study Ray?? but no-one is getting any of my ladies until they die of old age.

Mal.