Unraveling the Significance of Draglines: Female Sexual Signalization in the Nursery-Web Spider, Pisaura mirabilis

Abstract

Chemical signals used by animals to attract the opposite sex are well known in insects, but heavily understudied in spiders. We investigated the role of chemical signals in female draglines in a gift-giving spider, Pisaura mirabilis, using combined data from behavioral tests and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). We also investigated whether the quality of sexual signalization is influenced by crucial factors, such as female spider ontogeny, nutritional status, and mating status. We found that draglines of adult (versus subadult) and hungry (versus fed) females stimulated male motivation to produce nuptial gift, and highly sexually excited males invested more silk in gift production than less sexually excited males. Unexpectedly, chemical signals of eggsac-carrying females were similarly sexually attractive to draglines of adult females not carrying eggsac. HPLC identified significant chemical differences in female draglines, but these differences did not always correspond to male behavior. The integration of behavioral and chemical approaches is required to better understand animal behavior in future research.