Yes, you heard me! A male spider is 1 to 2% the weight of its female counterpart. In order to mate with the female the male must essentially court the female through a series of web vibrations, web spinning, and female abdomen drumming. New research by Jeffrey Stoltz has found that if this courtship does not occur for a period of at least 100 minutes than the male spider will not survive this mating ritual and will instead become dinner. If a male does complete his required "foreplay" than he may climb onto the female and complete the courtship and safely escape. On a side note, others males may try to steal his hard-work and sneak up to the female and mate with her while he continues his wooing. This scenario either ends in an early snack for the female or just plain cutthroat thievery. Males tend to fight to mate with females and the quickest, tiniest ones are more likely to win, which might account for their small stature. Why are the females so much bigger? One theory that Stoltz gave out was that these females have to be bigger to act as a referee and defend herself against the fighting males that want to mate with her.
One question that has not been solved that Stoltz refers to is the way that females discriminate against potential male suitors. Overall if the tiny males don't want to be dinner they better be able to distract her attention for those 100 first precious minutes!
-Alex Bourdois (4)
This article is just crazy. Do you know the percentage of males that turn into dinner instead of successfully mate? How does another spider go about stealing a female from another's courtship? Wouldn't she consistently eat the other male who was sneaking in and didn't display and courting acts?
ReplyDeleteYou said that males often fight to mate with females, are there any signs or signals that males have developed to avoid costly fights? Is there a way to determine the more "fit" male before a fight?
Posted by Tiffany Mallet
Kinda makes one glad not to be a spider. Do you happen to know the proportion of males that sneak in copulations while the others are doing the hard work? Are the sneaky males smaller than the wooing males? I guess it's not as bad as the male spider that actually flips over backwards into the female's mouth while he attempts to copulate with her. It gives an entirely different meaning to the term "prenuptial agreement."
ReplyDeletePosted by - Deysha Rivera
This is very unusual - usually the males are much bigger than females. Do all spiders engage in this sort of foreplay? Also, was this study conducted in a lab or in the field - did Stoltz catch spiders from the wild or raise some of his own?
ReplyDeletePosted by Bethany Rappleyea
This is very funny! I saw that you mentioned that "males may try to steal his hard-work and sneak up to the female and mate with her while he continues his wooing", but why is the male still wooing when he sees another male taking his place? Does he think he still has a chance? Also, can't the female discriminate between a male currently wooing on the web and a male who just came out of nowhere without doing any foreplay?
ReplyDeletePosted by Vanessa Raphael
This is really interesting. I wonder if the female requires foreplay because she enjoys it or because she can measure her male this way (his health, etc). If it is because she enjoys it, I thought only humans and dolphins enjoyed these types of activities. Do any other animals exhibit this behavior?
ReplyDelete-Alyson Paige
It is crazy to think that a mail is 1-2% of the weight of a female counter spider. in most other organisms the male is larger. I also thought it was interesting to read that if the mating doesn't last longer than 100 minutes then the male spider will then become food for the female spider. this leads me to the question of how is it possible if the female is so much larger than the male, does this mating actually work?
ReplyDelete-Stephen Chiricosta