Skip Navigation


Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on March 11, 2008
Behavioral Ecology 2008 19(4):799-804; doi:10.1093/beheco/arn030
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
19/4/799    most recent
arn030v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Walter, A.
Right arrow Articles by Moritz, R. F. A.
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Walter, A.
Right arrow Articles by Moritz, R. F. A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Wrap attack activates web-decorating behavior in Argiope spiders

André Waltera, Mark A. Elgarb, Peter Blissa and Robin F. A. Moritza

a Institut für Biologie, Bereich Zoologie, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany b Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia

Address correspondence to A. Walter. E-mail: andre.walter{at}zoologie.uni-halle.de.


  Abstract

Various orb-weaving spiders add extra silk structures—"web decorations"—to their webs. The adaptive value of these web decorations is still unclear, and the suite of functional hypotheses remains controversial. Spiders in the genus Argiope decorate their webs with densely woven zigzag ribbons made of fibrous aciniform silk. This type of silk is also used by the spiders for "wrap attacks" to immobilize the prey by wrapping it with a dense silk cover. Previous studies suggested that the spiders use accumulated excess silk for building web decorations due to a constant secretion in the aciniform glands. We test if this hypothesis holds for 3 species, which construct different types of web decorations: linear in Argiope bruennichi, irregular in Argiope sector, and cruciate in Argiope keyserlingi. We show that depletion of aciniform silk has a stimulating effect on web-decorating behavior in 3 species of Argiope. The aciniform glands apparently readily overcompensated experimentally induced silk losses, and so silk depletion may result in the activation of the according glands. We suggest that the aciniform gland activation might be an important mechanism for Argiope’s wrap attack to ensure sufficient wrapping of silk under high prey density and repeated wrapping events. The web decorations might function as a mechanism to maintain high gland activity, thereby maximizing the efficiency of the wrap attack strategy of Argiope.

Key words: aciniform silk, Argiope, capture strategy, gland activation, web decorations.

Received 26 September 2007; revised 7 February 2008; accepted 7 February 2008.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.