Are you Paying Attention? Female Wolf Spiders Increase Dragline Silk Advertisements When Males do not Court
| Autor: | Kristen Shimmel, Jamie A. Havrilak, Matthew H. Persons, Ann L. Rypstra |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Spider
biology media_common.quotation_subject fungi Wolf spider technology industry and agriculture Advertising macromolecular substances equipment and supplies biology.organism_classification Courtship SILK Mate choice Sexual communication Pheromone Animal Science and Zoology Pardosa milvina health care economics and organizations Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics media_common |
| Zdroj: | Ethology. 121:345-352 |
| ISSN: | 0179-1613 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/eth.12340 |
| Popis: | Females of many spider species invest in chemical advertisements to attract males, yet variation in investment relative to the presence or quality of males remains poorly understood. Males of the wolf spider Pardosa milvina court females longer and more intensively when in contact with female silk and also court more intensively when encountering silk from virgin rather than mated females; therefore, females may use silk as a medium to advertise their receptivity to mate. We estimated female investment in advertisements by measuring variation in the quantity and type of silk deposited by females in the presence or absence of males and among males that varied in their courtship intensity. We measured dragline silk, cord silk, and attachment disk deposition from females on gridded sheets of paper in response to four stimuli over a 30-min period (n = 39/treatment): (1) an intensively (high) courting male with access to female silk, (2) a weakly courting or non-courting male (low) without access to female silk, (3) no male present, but female silk present (silk control), and (4) no stimulus present (control). Females produced significantly more dragline silk and significantly less cord silk in the presence of low-courting males compared to any other treatment, but we found no difference in attachment disk deposition across treatments. Our results suggest that females invest more heavily in dragline deposition when encountering low-courting males. Additional studies are necessary to determine the relative role of different silk types in male–female sexual communication. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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