Beyond spider personality: The relationships between behavioral, physiological, and environmental factors.

Linda Hernández Duran,David Thomas Wilson,Mark Briffa,Tasmin Lee Rymer

doi:10.1002/ece3.7243

Abstract

Spiders are useful models for testing different hypotheses and methodologies relating to animal personality and behavioral syndromes because they show a range of behavioral types and unique physiological traits (e.g., silk and venom) that are not observed in many other animals. These characteristics allow for a unique understanding of how physiology, behavioral plasticity, and personality interact across different contexts to affect spider's individual fitness and survival. However, the relative effect of extrinsic factors on physiological traits (silk, venom, and neurohormones) that play an important role in spider survival, and which may impact personality, has received less attention. The goal of this review is to explore how the environment, experience, ontogeny, and physiology interact to affect spider personality types across different contexts. We highlight physiological traits, such as neurohormones, and unique spider biochemical weapons, namely silks and venoms, to explore how the use of these traits might, or might not, be constrained or limited by particular behavioral types. We argue that, to develop a comprehensive understanding of the flexibility and persistence of specific behavioral types in spiders, it is necessary to incorporate these underlying mechanisms into a synthesized whole, alongside other extrinsic and intrinsic factors.

Highlights

IntroductionStudies on animal personality and behavioral syndromes ( called coping styles, Table 1) have provided significant insights into how sexual selection (e.g., mate choice, sexual cannibalism; Rabaneda- Bueno et al, 2014, and sexual conflict) and natural selection (e.g., environmental conditions, and frequency dependence; Dall et al, 2004) affect the evolution of particular behaviors (Gosling, 2001; Sih & Bell, 2008; Sih et al, 2004)
Studies on animal personality and behavioral syndromes have provided significant insights into how sexual selection and natural selection affect the evolution of particular behaviors (Gosling, 2001; Sih & Bell, 2008; Sih et al, 2004)
|2 constrain the limits of this plasticity (Briffa et al, 2008), and that the level of plasticity is affected by the selection pressures of particular environments, as well as how much time individuals in a population spend in particular environments

Summary

Introduction

Studies on animal personality and behavioral syndromes ( called coping styles, Table 1) have provided significant insights into how sexual selection (e.g., mate choice, sexual cannibalism; Rabaneda- Bueno et al, 2014, and sexual conflict) and natural selection (e.g., environmental conditions, and frequency dependence; Dall et al, 2004) affect the evolution of particular behaviors (Gosling, 2001; Sih & Bell, 2008; Sih et al, 2004). Spiders have become an interesting group of arthropods to study personality and behavioral syndromes (e.g., Keiser et al, 2018; Kralj- Fišer & Schneider, 2012; Pruitt & Riechert, 2012; Sih & Bell, 2008) because they show a wide range of behavioral types (Table 1). Ecological and behavioral hypotheses related to spider personality (Kralj-Fišer & Schneider, 2012; Sih & Bell, 2008) can be tested across different social groups (social and solitary), clades (Mygalomorph and Araneomorph), life histories (Bonte et al, 2006), and habitats (Foelix, 2011). What makes spiders an excellent model system for testing ecological and evolutionary hypotheses related to personality is that spiders have the unique physiological traits of both venom

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