These Females Want Gifts Before Mating
When male nursery web spiders go a-courting, they always bring a gift wrapped in silk with them. A new study shows that the attractiveness of the present plays a larger role in determining mating success than previously thought.
Photo credit: Sabrina Weber
Because pheromones can potentially be incorporated into spider silk, Tuni and her colleagues at LMU‘s Behavioral Ecology Group wanted to define the role played by chemical signals in mating and reproduction in P. mirabilis, which belongs to the family of the wandering hunter spiders. To test whether the silk in which the males wrap their nuptial gifts might serve as a source of pheromones to attract mates, the researchers performed a series of experiments on a total of 100 nursery web spiders.
The tests revealed, however, that male and female nursery web spiders react differently to the silk that their potential partners secrete. Threads spun by the females indeed appear to contain pheromones that attract males. However, females themselves show no interest whatsoever in the threads made by the male.
They show no reaction either to the threads in which the nuptial gift is wrapped or to the ‘draglines’ secreted by the males during their visits to females. These findings imply either that male nursery spiders do not emit any volatile pheromones and must therefore rely on the effect of the gift itself, or that the females have learned to disregard any male pheromones into order to focus on the quality of the gift. (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 2018)
Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2018/03/these-females-want-gifts-before-mating.html
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