ABOVE: A male funnel-web spider (left) waves his legs in a mating dance for the female (right).
M.E. SPICER, J.N. PRUITT, C.N. KEISER
Funnel-web spiders (Agelenopsis pennsylvanica) engage in an eye-catching mating ritual, complete with drumming and dance, and alter their behavior depending on what microbes are present on their sexual organs, researchers reported July 29 in Ethology.
Male funnel-web spiders sway their abdomens, wave their legs, and pound on their webs to attract female attention. If a female responds to his courtship, the male delivers his sperm into her reproductive organs with appendages called pedipalps and then quickly retreats, as females sometimes devour their mates.
Both the males’ pedipalps and females’ abdomens carry distinct strains of bacteria, the scientists found. The researchers wanted to see “what happens when you modify the bacterial load on these spiders in the context of a super important behavior, which is courtship and mating,” says ...
