Leaf-curling Spider

The body length of the male is 5 to 6mm and female 8 to 12mm. Males and females look very similar with red-brown legs and body and a cream coloured pattern on their backs. Their bodies are fat and oval shaped with long tapered legs.

The spider is commonly found in open woodland and forest habitats, as well as urban and suburban gardens in the northeastern, eastern and southern Australian states.

The leaf-curling spiders are day-active orb weavers, protecting themselves from predators by sitting inside their silk-seamed, curled leaf. In P. graeffei this leaf is suspended just above the centre of the web, but may be placed higher in other species. Such leaves may be already be partly curled, though many are not, and the spider pulls and silks its leaf into a retreat cylinder, silked shut at the top and open at the hub. Like other web-weaving spiders, their main food source is flying insects including insects larger than itself. They are noted for their sexual cohabitation and its function in mate-guarding behaviour. This means that the male and female live together in the same curled leaf, occupying opposite ends of the retreat, with the female at the open end.

Mating behaviour. The species is unusual among orb-weaving spiders because males cohabit in the leaf retreat with both immature and mature females, mating with the former shortly after the female moults. Male spiders may take up residence nearby, or in the same web as the (often immature) female. Mating takes place as soon as she has her final moult.

According to Babette F. Fahey, M. A. Elgar, cohabitation may be a form of mate-guarding, because resident males challenge rival males that venture onto the web. …