Jumping spiders do not seem fooled by texture gradient illusions

Abstract

Jumping spiders (Salticidae) use exceptional vision, largely mediated by their forward-facing anterior lateral (AL) and anterior medial (AM) eyes, to pounce on prey from a distance. We evaluated depth perception through the use of ‘texture density’ (depth estimation through surface texture comparisons, with greater distances having higher textural density) in the salticid Trite planiceps. In visual cliff experiments, spiders tended to choose an area with a false ‘low drop’ over a false ‘high drop’ with the same texture densities, but showed no preference for either area when presented with substrates with different texture densities at a constant height. This was corroborated when T. planiceps did not avoid jumping over an illusion resembling a trench compared to a no-illusion control pattern. We then selectively occluded both AL and 1 AM eye (monocular treatment), both AL eyes (ALE-occluded binocular treatment) or no eyes (control), and induced spiders to jump across a gap at different heights. Neither control spiders, spiders with binocular cues from the AM eyes or monocular treatment spiders exhibited a height preference. These results suggest that while T. planiceps accurately perceives depth, it does not appear to rely on texture gradients as a depth cue.