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Case Reports
. 2022 Oct 29;109(6):51.
doi: 10.1007/s00114-022-01826-5.

Extended phenotypes can underlie trade-offs: a case of social spiders

Bharat Parthasarathy  1 , Michelle Bouchard  2 , Jutta M Schneider  2
Affiliations
Case Reports

Extended phenotypes can underlie trade-offs: a case of social spiders

Bharat Parthasarathy et al. Naturwissenschaften. .

Abstract

Extended phenotypes engineered by animals can potentially improve safety and/or foraging. Whether the well-known trade-off between safety and foraging applies for extended phenotypes, and if so, how it is resolved has not been determined. Spiders build elaborate silk structures that serve as traps for their insect prey and often attach silken retreats (nests) to their capture webs. These extended phenotypes of spiders are made of silk that is considered costly since it is made of protein. Using the Indian social spider, Stegodyphus sarasinorum, we examined how simple proximal factors, like colony hunger state and group size, shape trade-offs in collectively built extended phenotypes that offer shelter and food. We found that well-fed colonies showed greater investment in retreat silk than starved colonies. However, the two groups did not differ in their investment in capture webs. Hence, our findings validate the starvation-risk taking hypothesis in an extended phenotypic paradigm by showing that hungry colonies trade-off retreat size for capture web, irrespective of group size.

Keywords: Animal architecture; Foraging safety; Internal state; Silk; Spider web.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Retreat structure and capture web of Stegodyphus sarasinorum. A: The retreat is highlighted by a red box. The cribellate silk and supporting silken threads are highlighted by green and yellow boxes, respectively. B: Retreat structure viewed from the side of the frame
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The influence of group size and food treatment on per-capita retreat volume (A) and cribellate capture silk area (B). Boxes represent lower and upper quartiles, whilst whiskers represent data outside the lower and upper quartiles. Internal horizontal lines represent median values. Filled circles in red and blue represent individual colonies. Red circles indicate colonies in the starved state, and blue circles indicate the same colonies in the well-fed state. Filled circles in black represent outliers
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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