Lack of neophobic responses to color in a jumping spider that uses color cues when foraging (Habronattus pyrrithrix)

Abstract

Chemically defended prey often advertise their toxins with bright and conspicuous colors. To understand why such colors are effective at reducing predation, we need to understand the psychology of key predators. In bird predators, there is evidence that individuals avoid novelty—including prey of novel colors (with which they have had no prior experience). Moreover, the effect of novelty is sometimes strongest for colors that are typically associated with aposematic prey (e.g., red, orange, yellow). Given these findings in the bird literature, color neophobia has been argued to be a driving force in the evolution of aposematism. However, no studies have yet asked whether invertebrate predators respond similarly to novel colors. Here, we tested whether naive lab-raised jumping spiders (Habronattus pyrrithrix) exhibit similar patterns of color neophobia to birds. Using color-manipulated living prey, we first color-exposed spiders to prey of two out of three colors (blue, green, or red), with the third color remaining novel. After this color exposure phase, we gave the spiders tests where they could choose between all three colors (two familiar, one novel). We found that H. pyrrithrix attacked novel and familiar-colored prey at equal rates with no evidence that the degree of neophobia varied by color. Moreover, we found no evidence that either prey novelty nor color (nor their interaction) had an effect on how quickly prey was attacked. We discuss these findings in the context of what is known about color neophobia in other animals and how this contributes to our understanding of aposematic signals.