Abstract

Spiders exhibit many types of maternal care. The females of the hunting spider, Aysha piassaguera, build a nest for their eggs by folding the leaves of plants located on forest edges. Females stay inside the nest until the spiderlings hatch. In this study, we investigated how use of nests and the presence of maternal care by females affect offspring survival. We assigned the egg sacs found in the field to three treatments: control (nest intact and mother present), motherless (nest intact and mother removed), and opened (nest opened and mother removed). Nests were attacked by both predators and parasitoids. After 1 and 2 weeks, we compared egg survival rates among the three treatments. The proportion of egg sacs attacked differed among the three treatments in the 1 week trial [control (20 %), motherless (70 %), opened (96 %)], but after 2 weeks, survival was higher in the control compared to the other two treatments [control (78 %), motherless (11 %), opened (3.7 %)]. Therefore, mother presence was the main factor responsible for egg protection, while the nest had no effect on survival. This result demonstrates the importance of females for egg protection against natural enemies, which are the main cause of death for this species. While nests did not contribute to protection, they may help maintain the appropriate microenvironment for egg development or may facilitate egg sac defense by females.

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