By
Niusha Faghih
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Researchers are seeing if spiders from different areas will
Two UA researchers are spending their days watching jumping spiders dance.
Eileen Hebets and Wayne Maddison in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are studying how male and female jumping spiders mate differently on two separate mountain ranges.
The study - which looks at female preferences in male appearances and at the behavior of jumping spiders living in the Sky Islands - has been an ongoing research project since the spring of 1998, said Eileen Hebets, a graduate student for the ecology and evolutionary biology department.
The Sky Islands mountain ranges are "isolated like different islands in an ocean," said Hebets.
They include the Santa Catalina, Rincon, Galuiro and the Huachuca Mountains.
This behavioral study of the jumping spiders will find why females will mate or not mate with certain male jumping spiders because of how the males look and how they perform their mating dances, said Wayne Maddison, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Approximately 100 jumping spiders were gathered in vials from the mountain ranges when they were sitting on rocks sunbathing, Hebets said.
The spiders are similar in size, four to seven millimeters long. They differ in facial features and behaviors.
The Santa Rita and the Atascosa were picked for the spider gatherings because the spiders on those ranges are drastically different in behaviors and features, Hebets said.
Santa Rita males have white streaks above their eyes that are like eyebrows, and the top of their faces are white in color. Atascosa males have more of a silver-colored face.
Their behavior in courtship is also different, said Hebets.
The Santa Rita males lift up their legs and swivel from side to side in courtship while the Atascosa males don't swivel. They have a pair of "modified legs" called palps, that are used for courtship that alternate left and right. They are "kind of similar to a wax on, wax off motion," Hebets said.
In the study, Santa Rita females were mixed with Santa Rita males, Santa Rita females were mixed with Atascosa males, Atascosa females were mixed with Atascosa males, and Atascosa females were mixed with Santa Rita males.
The results of the study so far indicate that the Santa Rita females are making the choice of whether to mate with the Atascosa males or not, said Maddison.
"They (female Santa Rita spiders) are saying yes, depending on their age, more often to the male Atascosa spiders" than the Atascosa females are, he added.
