Communal Species...............

[wayne balcombe]

just a quick question to the floor..............................

when starting up a commune of Poecillotheria Spp. do the spiders have to have been together from leaving the sack? will spiders of the same size that have been kept seperately for a while be ok in a commune, the specific spiders i'm talking about are just grown on Slings that were seperated after hatching, will they go back in together without a problem and would i be able to add to this commune at a later date without the new addition being ousted?

[Peter Lacey]

I have several communities of poecilotheria: subfusca, rufilata, regalis, striata, pederseni, miranda and they all seem fairly content with each other, as long as plenty of food is supplied.
P. ornata are not known to be good community species and I had success and failure with groups of 4. P. striata have been reported as likely failures but on the whole I've found them to be quite good, although very skittish. I had 8 of these living communally, I split them into 2 groups of 4 for a month or so and then put them back together, I think I've lost 2 from that experiment.
All my pokies are kept together from sac and although they may split from the group or split into smaller groups they do tend to renew their acquaintance with their legs.
Mixing different species has been done but it renders any breeding susceptible to hybridising.
Any community project is an experiment IMO, things are not guaranteed to work and nor does the failures of one be the rule for the rest. If you have plenty of cheap slings I think its worthwhile but if you value your losses over your curiosity I'd keep them separate.

[wayne balcombe]

thanks for the response peter.

i was thinking along the lines of starting a community but the trouble you have getting the spiders is that they are usually kept seperate for trade purposes so i was just wondering if they would settle in with eachother again.

i may be aquiring 4 P.Metallica next month and although it would be great having them in a commune i think after reading your post i wouldn't want to take the chance with them as they are such a high value species.

i do want to get a community up and running so i'll keep my eyes open for anyone shifting a group of slings, i think P.Striata or P.Tigrinawesseli.