woody
10-28-03, 04:57 PM
With Spiders, to Know You is to Spare You
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Casual dating can be dangerous.
A study of spiders shows female wolf spiders will eat strange-looking males that try to mate with them, but spare and even hook up with familiar-looking males.
The findings provide not just an interesting insight into spider behavior, but may help explain actions by "higher" animals, said arachnologist Eileen Hebets of Cornell University in New York.
"The female is using earlier experience that is going to affect her mate choice later," Hebets said in a telephone interview. "It is reasonable to expect that is a common thing in other animals."
Hebets worked with Schizocosa uetzi spiders, commonly known as wolf spiders.
The female, which is slightly larger, can choose to mate, to run away or to eat her suitor. Sometimes she eats the hapless male after mating, Hebets said.
Hebets painted the legs of male spiders either brown or black with nail polish, and then raised females with either brown- or black-marked males, but not both.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hebets said the females were more likely to eat males painted with the "wrong" color instead of mating with him.
The more a female had been exposed to males with their legs painted a certain color, the more likely she was to eat a male painted with the other color, Hebets found.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Casual dating can be dangerous.
A study of spiders shows female wolf spiders will eat strange-looking males that try to mate with them, but spare and even hook up with familiar-looking males.
The findings provide not just an interesting insight into spider behavior, but may help explain actions by "higher" animals, said arachnologist Eileen Hebets of Cornell University in New York.
"The female is using earlier experience that is going to affect her mate choice later," Hebets said in a telephone interview. "It is reasonable to expect that is a common thing in other animals."
Hebets worked with Schizocosa uetzi spiders, commonly known as wolf spiders.
The female, which is slightly larger, can choose to mate, to run away or to eat her suitor. Sometimes she eats the hapless male after mating, Hebets said.
Hebets painted the legs of male spiders either brown or black with nail polish, and then raised females with either brown- or black-marked males, but not both.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hebets said the females were more likely to eat males painted with the "wrong" color instead of mating with him.
The more a female had been exposed to males with their legs painted a certain color, the more likely she was to eat a male painted with the other color, Hebets found.