Abstract
To avoid predation, many animals mimic behaviours and/or coloration of dangerous prey. Here we examine potential sex-specific mimicry in the jumping spider Habronattus pyrrithrix. Previous work proposed that males' conspicuous dorsal coloration paired with characteristic leg-waving (i.e. false antennation) imperfectly mimics hymenopteran insects (e.g. wasps and bees), affording protection to males during mate-searching and courtship. By contrast, less active females are cryptic and display less leg-waving. Here we test the hypothesis that sexually dimorphic dorsal colour patterns in H. pyrrithrix are most effective when paired with sex-specific behaviours. We manipulated spider dorsal coloration with makeup to model the opposite sex and exposed them to a larger salticid predator (Phidippus californicus). We predicted that males painted like females should suffer higher predation rates than sham-control males. Likewise, females painted like males should suffer higher predation rates than sham-control females. Contrary to expectations, spiders with male-like coloration were attacked more than those with female-like coloration, regardless of their actual sex. Moreover, males were more likely to be captured, and were captured sooner, than females (regardless of colour pattern). With these unexpected negative results, we discuss alternative functional hypotheses for H. pyrrithrix colours, as well as the evolution of defensive coloration generally.
Highlights
Predation can be dangerous, as many prey species defend themselves with toxins, venom or physical defenses that can harm (a)(b) royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R
Colour treatment, nor their interaction affected the amount of time the predator spent staring at the spiders or the amount of time spent stalking them, there was a non-significant trend towards spiders with male-like dorsal patterns to be stalked more by predators than those without
Our a priori hypothesis was that the sexually dimorphic dorsal colour patterns in Habronattus pyrrithrix are most effective at deterring predators when paired with sex-specific behaviours
Summary
As many prey species defend themselves with toxins, venom or physical defenses that can harm (a)(b) royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R. As many prey species defend themselves with toxins, venom or physical defenses that can harm (a). Some undefended prey species take advantage of this and have evolved strategic behaviours, colour patterns and other traits that mimic dangerous prey to deceive and avoid predators [1,2]. Many visual mimics are obvious to our human visual system [6,7,8,9], with the mimic bearing a near-perfect resemblance to the model [1]. There has been growing interest in the phenomenon of imperfect mimicry, where the mimic bears only a slight resemblance to the model [10,11]. Imperfect mimicry occurs more often in nature and is often enhanced by additional mimetic components, such as movement patterns [12,13,14,15]
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