Once you begin watching spiders, you haven’t time for much else.

~E.B. White

I have been raising some tulip-tree silk moth larvae at home and at work which has necessitated the periodic collecting of small branches of tulip poplar. Last week, when I cut one and brought it in I noticed one of my favorite spiders sitting on the underside of one of the leaves.

Magnolia green jumper looking up at the camera (click photos to enlarge)

It was a female magnolia green jumper. I recently did a post about the males of this species when I found a couple on some pawpaw trees at the house. But this was a female (distinguished by the lack of swellings near the tips of her pedipalps) and she was apparently guarding something very precious…

Eggs of a magnolia green jumper

…a cluster of eggs in a loosely spun silken case on the underside of a tulip poplar leaf. They did not resemble the usual spider egg case, which tends to be enclosed in a globular silken egg sac. These were loosely dispersed beneath a sheet of silk as individual eggs. I checked online just to make sure and found some other images that confirmed these were indeed her eggs. Since I had already cut the branch, I decided to keep them and watch what happened.

Spiderlings just after hatching

Three days after I collected the leaf with the eggs, I noticed a change. There appeared to be spider-like blobs poking off the green eggs. I must admit, I just could not figure out how this worked. Was this thing with leg-like appendages the spider emerging from the egg? The more I looked at it, I decided that the old egg shell is actually the whitish crumpled blob you can see next to each green orb in the photo, and that the roundish green thing is the abdomen of the a new spider.

Cluster of magnolia green jumper spiderlings

This was confirmed over the next couple of days as I watched the spiderlings unfold their legs (this occurred on day 5 after I collected the eggs and two days after the previous photo was taken).

Three days after I first saw the baby spider legs appearing to unfold from the eggs

Magnolia green jumpers three days after hatching

The young spiderlings have continued to develop as I watch them each day, their eyes appearing larger and darker in color, and they seem to be moving more, albeit still inside the silken covering laid down by their mother. Today, I will probably go ahead and clip their leaf to a tulip poplar branch and watch to see when (and how) they manage to leave this protective lair. I imagine, somewhere nearby, their mother is looking on with proud eyes (all 8 of them)…

Magnolia green jumper female