Stegodyphus lineatus
The act of reproduction, regarding the female, leads to an increase of digestive enzymes. This allows her to eat more prey and to stock more nutrients. The digestive enzymes then start to digest the inside of the organism itself, except for the heart, guts, and mostly the ovaries. Once the offspring are born, and until the mother dies, the mother regurgitates for two weeks the fluids stocked inside as highly nutritive food for the progeny. Ninety-five per cent of the mother's mass is digested by the offspring. They will grow to three times their original size between their birth and dispersion. During the period when female spiders are caring for their hatched offspring, the mothers do not eat, and their offspring only eat the food that the mother regurgitates along with the mother's body at the end of this time.
Exoenzyme
Amylases are a group of extracellular enzymes (glycoside hydrolases) that catalyze the hydrolysis of starch into maltose. These enzymes are grouped into three classes based on their amino acid sequences, mechanism of reaction, method of catalysis and their structure. The different classes of amylases are α-amylases, β-amylases, and glucoamylases. The α-amylases hydrolyze starch by randomly cleaving the 1,4-a-D-glucosidic linkages between glucose units, β-amylases cleave non-reducing chain ends of components of starch such as amylose, and glucoamylases hydrolyze glucose molecules from the ends of amylose and amylopectin. Amylases are critically important extracellular enzymes and are found in plants, animals and micro-organisms. In humans, amylases are secreted by both the pancreas and salivary glands with both sources of the enzyme required for complete starch hydrolysis.