Male black widow spiders get jealous: SFU study
Posted July 14, 2015 9:58 pm.
Last Updated July 15, 2015 8:31 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Turns out it isn’t just men who get jealous. New research out of SFU shows male black widows destroy female spider’s webs to deter rivals.
The silk pheromones that female black widows produce are like scent-based personal ads says lead author of the study Catherine Scott. Because of this, male spiders have developed ways to fend off the competition.
“It’s a really fascinating behaviour and we did find that in fact web reduction does limit the attractiveness of the female’s web. It’s not entirely clear how it works it does seem like the males silk is important and whatever he’s doing is much more effective than us removing half of the web entirely,” she explains.
She says the females don’t seem to mind, and that the behaviour could mean protection from harassment while the female tends to parenting.
“So what happens is during their courtship display on the female’s web, male black widows will often start destroying the web. They’ll cut out sections of the females web bundle up the silk and then wrap it up with its own silk.”
Scott says competition for females is fierce; as many as 40 male suitors may arrive at a female’s web in one night.
The research was done by SFU and published in Animal Behaviour.
