2001/08/07 by Wee Khee Seah, Daiqin Li · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research #Spider Taxonomy and Behavior Studies
paper · doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1709
openalex publication_date 2001/08/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Conspicuous behaviour exposes animals to predation; prey-attraction thus often conflicts with antipredator behaviour. The fact that a conspicuous ultraviolet-light reflecting silken structure in the orb-webs of certain spider species, known as a stabilimentum, makes the webs obvious to both prey and predators has been used to argue that spiders benefit from building stabilimenta by attracting prey and/or defending against visually hunting predators. Here, we provide experimental evidence that stabilimenta can act as visual signals that attract web-invading spider-eating predators with acute vision to the webs. We also show that the predators can learn to remember a particular type of stabilimentum. Thus, stabilimentum-building spiders risk a high level of predation by attracting visually hunting predators.