I think it's not so often what we don't know that gets us as what we "know" but isn't so.
We where so sure that the gender of the spider parent didn't matter that we might miss a legitimate trend in the data we never bother to look at.
I would think that the "normal" males where just "normal for spider" and where indeed other morphs that we would not expect to have any effect (although here too would be nice to see what the data tells us).
If this data, the trends, and the analysis hold up we'll want to figure out why this is happening even though we didn't expect it. My bet would be that spider sperm are some how less effective (maybe they flip their heads up and get lost on the way to the egg, lol) but that spider egg cells are at least as easily fertilized as normals and maybe spider embryos have a better survival rate, perhaps the reported spider vigor.
