Light Colored Spiders

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This experiment conducted at the University of Natural Sciences and Humanities in Lodz Poland attempted to understand the relationship between the shade and color of the substrate and it’s effects on the predatory behavior of Yllenus arenarius a cryptically colored jumping spider native to the region. The researchers were testing whether the predator would adapt it’s behavior based on it’s background when hunting prey. They used both subadult and adult male and female spiders which are known to have different colors. The spiders were tested on light sand and dark sand. Light colored spiders referred to female, and subadult males. Adult male spiders were referred to as dark spider. The prey selected were leafhoppers which are natural prey for the spiders in the experiment. Researchers used a white cardboard box to visually examine the spider’s camouflage. Spiders were placed on either light color sand or dark colored sand. The spiders were left to hunt for 15 minutes and their success, distance to prey and speed was recorded. Light colored females on light backgrounds had the most success. The results concluded that background color significantly affected the jumping distance. On the light backgrounds the spiders moved closer to their …show more content…

The research concluded that spiders which were able to camouflage had better hunting success than those who could not. This was to be expected and did not seem to offer any new or valuable research to the scientific community. One interesting thing is it does show that these spiders were aware of their surroundings and able to change their behavior based on this principal. This shows some intelligence or understanding on the jumping spiders part. Yet there was no control group to compare this to and each spider was only used once. This paper also shows the difference between male and female behaviors but more experiments will have to be done to corroborate these

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