Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 142, August 2018, Pages 185-190
Animal Behaviour

Vision-mediated courtship in a nocturnal arthropod

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.06.016Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Nocturnal huntsman spider Heteropoda venatoria has good vision at night.

  • Female H. venatoria can use vision to assess the quality of males during mating.

  • Males with white stripes are more attractive and have greater mating success.

Visual signals are widely used by animals in foraging, mating and predator avoidance. Body coloration plays an important role in the reproductive behavioural interactions of many diurnal animal species; however, its role in the courtship of nocturnal species has received little attention. We investigated the role of conspicuous body coloration, a white stripe on the forehead region, in the reproductive interactions of the nocturnal brown huntsman spider, Heteropoda venatoria. We performed a series of mating trials in which we manipulated the body coloration of males and the vision of females and determined the probabilities of mating success of males in different treatments. Results showed that males that courted females with intact vision had a significantly lower probability of mating success than males that courted females whose vision was blocked. Females with intact vision were also more likely to choose males with a white stripe than those whose stripe was removed. Therefore, we have unambiguously demonstrated for the first time that body coloration plays an important role as a visual signal in the mating of nocturnal spiders.

Section snippets

Spiders and Maintenance

The H. venatoria individuals used in our experiments were collected as subadults from the Tunghai University campus (120°9′56″E, 24°18′00″N) and the Conservation Education Center, Taiwan Endemic Species Research Institute in Chi-Chi, Nantou County, Taiwan (120°48′03.1″E,23°49′42.1″N). They were kept in the laboratory until maturity. We housed them individually in plastic containers (ca. 2 litres) fitted with mesh covers. They were watered and fed with one cockroach (body length ca. 1.5 cm)

Results

Since the interaction between female vision and male stripe was significant (Table 1), we merged these two factors into one factor with four levels (V+W+, V+W−, V−W+ and V−W−). The probability of mating success for the males varied between treatment groups. It was high in groups where female vision was impaired (85% in group V−W+ and 95% in group V−W−), medium in the group with female vision intact and males with white stripes (45% in group V+W+) and low in the group with female vision intact

Discussion

In this study, we unambiguously demonstrated the roles of conspicuous body parts and vision in the courtship of a nocturnal arthropod. When the vision of the female was blocked, courting males had a significantly higher probability of mating success (Fig. 1d). However, when female vision was not blocked, males with a white stripe had higher mating success than those without. This implies that the body coloration of males was important, although it cannot assure successful courtship. Sexual

Acknowledgments

The study was funded by a Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST, Taiwan) grant (MOST-106-2311-B-029-003-MY3) to I.M.T and two MOST postdoctoral grants (MOST 103-2811-B-029-001, 103-2811-B-029-003) to S.Z. We thank Cheng-Wei Chang, Yu-Pei Cheng and Ping-Chung Lin for the dedicated assistance in the field and laboratory.

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