[3] Amaurobius ferox is known to spin a cribellate web to facilitate prey capture and provide a protective retreat.

[2] The web is special because the silk has a unique woolly texture that is caused by extremely thin and extraordinarily sticky fibers, which gives the species its common-name, the black lace-weaver.

A. ferox prefers to lay its webs on vertical surfaces, and the species most often creates a tangled mesh of threads surrounding a circular retreat leading into a crevice.

This decrease in group cohesion is concurrent with the significant amount of individual variability of developmental instar and body mass that is seen during dispersal.

Similar to the trophic egg consumption and matriphagy behaviors, this phenomenon might have adaptive values in the development of mutual tolerance among the siblings.

This also serves to make the spiderlings’ matriphagous and cooperative prey capture behaviors as peaceful as possible in order to maximize the mother’s direct fitness.

First, the mother undergoes a three week incubation period during which she stays within extremely close proximity of her egg sac.

At the end of the incubation period, the mother breaks open the egg sac allowing her 40 to 135 spiderlings to emerge into the world.

[7] Observations have shown that the cannibalistic process is completed within just a few hours, in the course of which mothers and offspring appear to exchange stimulation.

The mother’s attitude towards the young in terms of “solicitation”, tolerance, and predatory response appears to depend on her reproductive state.

The roughly 29 hour period which begins from the clutch’s emergence and ends with the eggs’ consumption can be divided into three stages of behavioral activity.

The first stage occurs up to two to three hours before trophic egg laying and is characterized by a low level of activity.

The second stage occurs in the last one to two hours before egg laying and is characterized by increasing activity of both the mother and her offspring, especially during the last 30 minutes.

At first, the mother displays a series of rotations above the group of young, surrounding the clutch with a loose network of ecribellate silk.

Once the entire mass of eggs is eaten, the spiderlings’ opisthosomae are at the maximum size, and they then immediately leave to disperse inside the web.

However, similar to the effect had on molting, spiderlings that do not consume trophic eggs exhibit delays in matriphagy and also lower survival rates.

This indicates that the positive effects of matriphagy are not enough to compensate for the previous weight loss due to the lack of trophic eggs.