Pamphobeteus sp. failing to produce silk and eggsac construction

[Patricio Cavallo]

Bad news for the Pamphobeteus female, she's been making the spinning behaviour for eggsac construction since yesterday but her spinnerets seem obstructed and she can't actually spin silk. I had to make the attempt to clean her butt with a moist brush and then with a moist swab with alcohol. Even after disturbing the spider like this, she's again calm in her retreat doing the same eggscac construction behaviour but still failing to produce silk apparently... maybe there's something wrong with silk glands or other stuff from last molt, I really didn't see this before. I had spider's drop eggs without previous silk, but I don't recall this exact behaviour (as she's doing everything normal but without silk!). I no longer fear for the sac (which I see it's not going good at all), but the health of the spider...maybe she'll drop the eggs anyway. This whole situation is very estrange

This female is very fertile and produced a large sac with 150 spiderlings last year. At that time she was mated in the wild. This time she mated perfectly in captivity and everything looked perfect for a sac soon.
Here are some pics a few days ago. Before she dug into the retreat to attempt sac construction:







Anyone had anything like this happened before??? Any advice?

Cheers,
Pato

[Matthew Bagley]

Sorry to hear there's no improvement .

[Patricio Cavallo]

And she keeps ''spinning'' lol

click for a short video:

[Patricio Cavallo]

Well... she dropped the eggs into the dirt and keeps pretending she's webbing and finishing the invisible eggsac. So in about 12 or 24 hours, she'll finish and realize she couldn't do it
Now I'll have to wait until about July next year......... weird event- lol

[Colin D Wilson]

I'm thinking along the same lines as you about the last moult, maybe there's a natural deformity to the spinnerettes and she can'tproduce the silk needed to bind the sac.

Sad news though Pato

[James Box]

is there any chance you can put the eggs into a bit of cheesecloth or something and incubate them? or maybe she'll look after a "sac" like that herself? i've heard of spiders "nursing" ping pong balls, for example.

[Patricio Cavallo]

I'm thinking along the same lines as you about the last moult, maybe there's a natural deformity to the spinnerettes and she can'tproduce the silk needed to bind the sac.

Sad news though Pato

Yes, exactly what I suspect too. I hope she recovers with the next molt...