waking beauties: mating quiescence in arachnid females

CARGNELUTTI, FRANCO; BOLLATTI, FEDRA; IZQUIERDO, MATIAS A; ABREGÚ, DEBORA; OVIEDO-DIEGO, MARIELA; VRECH, DAVID E; OLIVERO, PAOLA; CALBACHO-ROSA, LUCIA; SIMIAN, CATALINA; ROCÍO PALE-PIETRI; MATTONI, CAMILO I; PERETTI, ALFREDO V

ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOR

ELSEVIER ACADEMIC PRESS INC

Lugar: Burlington, MA, Estados Unidos; Año: 2023

0065-3454

Although strongly criticized during the 90s, male bias in sexual selection studies is still rootedin science. Arachnids are not an exception, with most studies ignoring female behaviors oreven reporting its absence during mating interactions. A stunning example is femalequiescence during or after copulation, a behavior defined with different terms that frequentlynullify females’ autonomy. Although female quiescence is mainly reported for spiders, it alsooccurs in other arachnid orders. In this review, we first systematically compiled informationon the occurrence of female quiescence in arachnids, a major arthropod clade that includes13 orders and more than 100,000 species. Then, we (i) propose a terminology that bestrepresents the available information in the literature, (ii) determine whether male behaviorstrigger female quiescence, (iii) evaluate the generality of hypotheses formulated for somespecific taxa, and (iv) suggest possible contexts that may favor the evolution of femalequiescence in arachnids. In the literature search, we found reports of female quiescencemainly in three orders: Araneae, Scorpiones, and Solifugae. We propose ‘mate choice’ and‘communication during copulation’ as the two main hypotheses to explain female quiescence.In both hypotheses, females have an active role, contrasting with other hypotheses thatinterpret female quiescence as a male-induced behavior. Since the reports are usuallyvague, without a behavioral description, we encourage researchers to document anddescribe the female mating quiescence behavior in more detail and carefully name eachbehavioral unit, avoiding setting indirect hypotheses still not tested.