Females & sclerotised spermathecae

[m0lsx]

Before Christmas, I sent a local dealer a list of my males who I thought were close to maturing & of my females who I thought were mature, who he could borrow to breed with. I do not breed, so I do not check female molts to see if they are mature. Thus I spent some time, just out of curiosity, looking around at online information, about female tarantula sexual maturity.

Today I came here to find someone had asked about his T. I do not want to confuse that post. As the poster of the question, has very few posts listed on their profile & I don't want to spoil their thread for them, or confuse that thread. But it reminded me of what I think I may have read before Christmas.


My question is.

I do not know where I read it & it may just be in my imagination. But I am positive I read somewhere that, although a female is fully matured when her spermathecae becomes sclerotised, (hardened.) It is possible for some T's to revert to an unsclerotised spermathecae with some molts. Thus a sclerotised spermathecae, is an indication that she was fertile, but it is not a 100% indication that she currently is. I seem to remember it being suggested that this may be natures way of giving her a year off breeding, occasionally. Does anyone know if the above is correct, as google has proved no help.

 

[ilovebrachys]

My first response to your post would be don't send your females off - no one in their right mind would do this would do this as the risk envolved isn't worth it and all you will be doing is lining someone's pockets everyone wants females for a reason, it's out of your hands what happens to her and it could potentially be more than a year before you get her back (if at all) - send males off by all accounts to breed - it's important to do our bit for the hobby by doing this at every opportunity if you are not breeding with them yourself
I'm response to your question about the spermathecae when it has darkened the female is of breeding age - I've never heard about the changes you have mentioned or weather this is at all possible as if a female will just moult out if she's not ready to drop a sac? I can't see why the spermathecae would change in anyway once she has reached maturity?
@Arachnoclown and @plessey @Casey K. Maybe able to answer this question better than I can

 

[ilovebrachys]

Stolen from @Arachnoclown

 

[Casey K.]

Usually, when the spermeatheca has "darkened" in color, that means the female is mature and ready to breed. Leg span also plays a major role in this. Austin S. told me that a female can breed at 3/4 or 75% of her "average" adult leg span. I have found this to be true in all of my breeding projects except for one species and that was Idiothele mira. The females (3 of them) all became egg bound and died eventually. Other than these two basic things, that's all I know. Conditioning females prior/post breeding is a different subject but if ever any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.