Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Many paths, one destination: mapping the movements of a kleptoparasitic spider on the host’s web

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Comparative Physiology A Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Kleptoparasitic spiders live and forage in the webs of other spiders. Using vibratory cues generated by the host spider during prey capture, they leave their resting positions in the upper peripheries of the host web and move towards the centre of the web where they feed along with the host spider or steal small pieces of prey. While the triggers for initiating the foraging raids are known, there is little information about the fine-scale trajectory dynamics in this model system. We mapped the movement of the kleptoparasite Argyrodes elevatus in the web of the host Trichonephila clavipes. We filmed the movement of the kleptoparasite spiders and quantified the trajectory shape, speed, heading directions and path revisitation. Our results show that kleptoparasitic spider movement is spatially structured, with higher levels of speed at the peripheries and slower in the centre of the web. We found a high level of variation in trajectory shapes between individuals. We found that the majority of heading orientations were away from the hub suggesting that detouring or repeated approaches are an essential component of kleptoparasite movement strategies. Our results of the revisitation rate also confirm this pattern, where locations close to the hub were revisited more often than in the periphery. The kleptoparasite–host spider system is a promising model to study fine-scale movement patterns in small bounded spaces.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Agnarsson I (2003) Spider webs as habitat patches—The distribution of kleptoparasites (Argyrodes, theridiidae) among host webs (Nephila, tetragnathidae). J Arachnol 31(3):344–349

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bracis C, Bildstein KL, Mueller T (2018) Revisitation analysis uncovers spatio-temporal patterns in animal movement data. Ecography 41:1801–1811. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cangialosi K (1991) Attack strategies of a spider kleptoparasite: effects of prey availability and host colony size. Anim Behav 41:639–647. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-3472(05)80902-9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collett TS, Zeil J (1996) Flights of learning. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 5:149–155

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elgar MA (1989) Kleptoparasitism: a cost of aggregating for an orb-weaving spider. Anim Behav 37:1052–1055

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaffin DD, Curry CM (2020) Arachnid navigation—a review of classic and emerging models. J Arachnol 48:1–26. https://doi.org/10.1636/0161-8202-48.1.1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garber PA, Porter LM (2014) Navigating in small-scale space: the role of landmarks and resource monitoring in understanding saddleback tamarin travel. Am J Primatol 76(5):447–459. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22196

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fu AW, Keogh E, Lau LY, Ratanamahatana CA, Wong RC (2008) Scaling and time warping in time series querying. VLDB J 17(4):899–921

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hemmi JM, Zeil J (2005) Animals as prey: perceptual limitations and behavioural options: sensory biology: linking the internal and external ecologies of marine organisms. Mar Ecol Prog Ser (Halstenbek) 287:274–278

    Google Scholar 

  • Hénaut Y, Delme J, Legal L, Williams T (2005) Host selection by a kleptobiotic spider. Naturwissenschaften 92(2):95–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hu B, Chen Y, Keogh E (2013) Time series classification under more realistic assumptions. In: Proceedings of the 2013 SIAM international conference on data mining 2013. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, pp 578–586

  • Iyengar EV (2008) Kleptoparasitic interactions throughout the animal kingdom and a re-evaluation, based on participant mobility, of the conditions promoting the evolution of kleptoparasitism. Biol J Linn Soc 93(4):745–762

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keogh E, Ratanamahatana CA (2005) Exact indexing of dynamic time warping. Knowl Inf Syst 7(3):358–386

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuntner M, Hamilton CA, Cheng RC, Gregorič M, Lupše N, Lokovšek T, Lemmon EM, Lemmon AR, Agnarsson I, Coddington JA, Bond JE (2019) Golden orbweavers ignore biological rules: phylogenomic and comparative analyses unravel a complex evolution of sexual size dimorphism. Syst biol 68(4):555–572

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Layne J, Barnes W, Duncan L (2003) Mechanisms of homing in the fiddler crab Uca rapax 1. Spatial and temporal characteristics of a system of small-scale navigation. J Exp Biol 206:4413–4423

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mather JA (1991) Navigation by spatial memory and use of visual landmarks in octopuses. J Comp Physiol A 168:491–497. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00199609

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Narendra A (2020) Orientation by central-place foragers. In: Encyclopedia of Social Insects. Springer, Springer Nature,

  • Rao D, Tapia-McClung H, Narendra A (2019) Reeling in the prey: Fishing behaviour in an orb web spider. J Exp Biol 1:9. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.213751

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reppert SM, de Roode JC (2018) Demystifying monarch butterfly migration. Curr Biol 28:R1009–R1022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.02.067

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson MH, Mirick H (1971) The predatory behavior of the golden-web spider Nephila clavipes (Araneae: Araneidae). Psyche 78:123–139

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stürzl W, Grixa I, Mair E, Narendra A, Zeil J (2015) Three-dimensional models of natural environments and the mapping of navigational information. J Comp Physiol A 201(6):563–584

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stellwag LM, Dodson GN (2010) Navigation by male crab spiders Misumenoides formosipes (Araneae: Thomisidae): Floral cues may aid in locating potential mates. J Ins Behav 23:226–235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-010-9209-9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Troup G, Doran B, Au J, King LE, Douglas-Hamilton I, Heinsohn R (2020) Movement tortuosity and speed reveal the trade-offs of crop raiding for African elephants. Anim Behav 168:97–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.08.009

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ubick D, Paquin P, Cushing PE, Roth VD (2017) Spiders of North America: an identification manual. American Arachnological Society

  • Vollrath F (1979a) Behaviour of the kleptoparasitic spider Argyrodes elevatus (Araneae, Theridiidae). Anim Behav 27:515–521

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vollrath F (1979b) Vibrations: their signal function for a spider kleptoparasite. Science 205:1149–1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.205.4411.1149

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vollrath F (1984) Kleptobiotic interactions in invertebrates. In: Barnard C (ed) Producers and scroungers: strategies of exploitation and parasitism. Springer, US, pp 61–94

  • Whitehouse MEA (1997) The benefits of stealing from a predator: foraging rates, predation risk, and intraspecific aggression in the kleptoparasitic spider Argyrodes antipodiana. Behav Ecol 8:663–667

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitehouse M, Agnarsson I, Miyashita T, Smith D, Cangialosi K, Masumoto T, Li D, Henaut Y (2002) Argyrodes: phylogeny, sociality and interspecific interactions—A report on the Argyrodes symposium, Badplaas 2001. J Arachnol 30:238–245

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiegmann DD, Hebets EA, Gronenberg W, Graving JM, Bingman VP (2016) Amblypygids: model organisms for the study of arthropod navigation mechanisms in complex environments? Front Behav Neurosci 10:1–8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00047

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfram Research, Inc. (2020) Mathematica, Version 12.2. Champaign, IL

  • Zeil J, Fleischmann PN (2019) The learning walks of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Myrmecol News 29:93–110. https://doi.org/10.25849/myrmecol.news_029:093

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Carlos Carmona Bonilla and Diana Debernardi Hernández for help in data collection and care of spiders and Yann Henaut for support. We thank Luis Quijano Cuervo for identification of the kleptoparasite species. RRG was supported by a M.Sc. scholarship from CONACyT, Mexico. This study was partially supported by a travelling fellowship from the Company of Biologists to DR. HTM acknowledges support from CONACyT Problemas Nacionales Grant # 5150 and Fronteras de la Ciencia Grant # 425854.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Biotecnología y Ecología Aplicada (INBIOTECA), Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico

    Rogelio Rosales-García & Dinesh Rao

  2. Instituto de Investigación en Inteligencia Artificial (IIIA), Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico

    Horacio Tapia-McClung

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Ajay Narendra

Authors
  1. Rogelio Rosales-García
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Horacio Tapia-McClung
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ajay Narendra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Dinesh Rao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Data collection—RRG. Writing original draft—DR. Writing and revision—DR, RRG, AN and HTM. Analysis—DR, RRG, AN and HTM. Visualisation—DR, RRG, AN and HTM. Conceptualisation—DR. Project administration—DR.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dinesh Rao.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare they have no conflict of interests. All spiders were released after experiments. Data will be made available on request.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

S1: Animated time lapse movie of a single kleptoparasite trajectory overlaid on the image of a host web. Trailing colours in the dot represent speed of the kleptoparasite. The movie is available at this location. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jx58sjhnx1lvmzl/S1_argyrodes%20sample%20trajectory.mp4.mov?raw=1

S2: All distance profile curves of the kleptoparasites as they approached the hub.

S3: Heading direction histograms for all trajectories

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rosales-García, R., Tapia-McClung, H., Narendra, A. et al. Many paths, one destination: mapping the movements of a kleptoparasitic spider on the host’s web. J Comp Physiol A 207, 293–301 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-021-01477-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-021-01477-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation