Consistency of females' stridulatory behaviour during intersexual interactions in spiders

CARGNELUTTI, FRANCO; CALBACHO-ROSA, LUCÍA; PERETTI, ALFREDO V.; CÓRDOBA-AGUILAR, ALEX

ETHOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2019 p. 1 - 7

0179-1613

In a sexual context, it is expected that females base their choice of mate on the behavioursthat males perform during courtship, as such behaviours are associatedwith the male´s mate quality. Stridulation is one form of female communication inarthropods, for example, spiders. In spiders, stridulation during sexual interactionsis relatively common in some groups but mainly restricted to males. In the pholcidspider Holocnemus pluchei (Pholcidae), both sexes have stridulatory organs. The aimsof the present work were to: (a) determine possible differences in the frequency ofoccurrence of stridulation between females during inter‐sexual interactions, (b) establishfemale consistency in stridulation along repeated interactions and (c) analyseif female stridulation is associated with certain male behaviours during pre‐copulatorycourtship and with male size. Female H. pluchei showed highly repeatable differencesin their frequency of stridulation across consecutive encounters with males(ICC = 0.64). However, only a modest level of repeatability was detected in total timefemales spent stridulating across trials (ICC = 0.19). Females? mean stridulatory behaviourdid not change across ten consecutive trials spread across 20 days, and theirbehaviour was apparently unaffected by male persistence of copulatory attemptedand/or size. These results imply that the frequency of female stridulatory behaviouris a trait that is highly characteristic of each individual. Finally, our work opens thedoor to determine whether behavioural consistency manifests in other ecologicalcontexts and their functional implications.