Exposure to multiple sensory cues as a juvenile affects adult female mate preferences in wolf spiders

Abstract

Experience is known to influence female mating in a variety of vertebrate animals; however, the effects of experience on mate choice have been less well-studied in invertebrates. In a series of recent studies conducted on spiders, it was shown that females develop preferences for novel, artificially modified male phenotypes when exposed to them as juveniles. However, because Schizocosa wolf spiders are known to respond to multiple sensory cues in mate choice, concerns have been raised about the use of nail polish to modify male visual phenotypes. Here we attempted to repeat the earlier experiment, but address effects of chemical versus visual learning separately, using the wolf spider species Schizocosa rovneri. Results indicate that exposure to novel visual/chemical male phenotypes influenced adult female mate preference for visual and to some extent chemical phenotypes, but in this case, females avoided familiar male phenotypes and preferred those to which they had not been exposed. Our results suggest that female mate preferences may be based on more factors than previously recognized, and that experience may reinforce behavioural isolation of species by increasing avoidance of mating with visually or chemically distinct male phenotypes.