Nature & Environment
Spiders Learn Mating Behaviors by Eavesdropping on Other Wolf Spiders (VIDEO)
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Aug 05, 2015 08:40 AM EDT
When it comes to mating, a common spider learns quickly that eavesdropping may put it on top. Scientists have found that eavesdropping on visual cues of rivals may help spiders win their choice of mate.
Previous studies have shown that brush-legged wolf spiders use visual cues to outdo a male rival's leg-tapping mating maneuver in the wild. In the wild, males start their show when they smell the pheromones in the silk strands of a female.
Yet this courtship behavior becomes a learning experience for male wolf spiders raised in the lab. When they were shown videos of other leg-tapping, courting males paired with silk cues from females, the lab spiders quickly learned to recognize the behavior as part of the courtship process in as little as four days.
"This discovery has completely changed our way of thinking about this little spider," said George Uetz, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We thought because they were invertebrates with a tiny brain, everything about them is genetically regulated in a hardwired nervous system, i.e., they respond instinctively because it's programmed into their nervous system. Over the years, we've found there's a lot more to the story. Males learn to associate the courtship behavior of other males with female cues and they can make this leap. It's a complex set of behaviors for a tiny little brain. Not only do they learn from visual cues but also from vibration cues."
Sexual selection in mating behavior is an important part of evolutionary biology. Research into animal behavior can actually provide insights into how human physiology or neurobiology works.
"There's a lot of eavesdropping that occurs in the natural world, but it's usually associated with moer highly social animals with much bigger brains," said Uetz. "It's very common in birds, fish and mammals, but infrequently seen among invertebrates."
The findings reveal a bit more about the courting behavior in these spiders and show they actual learn the behavior from others.
The findings are published in the journal Animal Behavior.
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First Posted: Aug 05, 2015 08:40 AM EDT
When it comes to mating, a common spider learns quickly that eavesdropping may put it on top. Scientists have found that eavesdropping on visual cues of rivals may help spiders win their choice of mate.
Previous studies have shown that brush-legged wolf spiders use visual cues to outdo a male rival's leg-tapping mating maneuver in the wild. In the wild, males start their show when they smell the pheromones in the silk strands of a female.
Yet this courtship behavior becomes a learning experience for male wolf spiders raised in the lab. When they were shown videos of other leg-tapping, courting males paired with silk cues from females, the lab spiders quickly learned to recognize the behavior as part of the courtship process in as little as four days.
"This discovery has completely changed our way of thinking about this little spider," said George Uetz, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We thought because they were invertebrates with a tiny brain, everything about them is genetically regulated in a hardwired nervous system, i.e., they respond instinctively because it's programmed into their nervous system. Over the years, we've found there's a lot more to the story. Males learn to associate the courtship behavior of other males with female cues and they can make this leap. It's a complex set of behaviors for a tiny little brain. Not only do they learn from visual cues but also from vibration cues."
Sexual selection in mating behavior is an important part of evolutionary biology. Research into animal behavior can actually provide insights into how human physiology or neurobiology works.
"There's a lot of eavesdropping that occurs in the natural world, but it's usually associated with moer highly social animals with much bigger brains," said Uetz. "It's very common in birds, fish and mammals, but infrequently seen among invertebrates."
The findings reveal a bit more about the courting behavior in these spiders and show they actual learn the behavior from others.
The findings are published in the journal Animal Behavior.
Related Stories
Males are Home-Wreckers: Black Widow Spiders Eat Females' Webs
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone