I have published a brief communication paper on the (lack of) effect of experience in orb spiders ability to adapt to spatial constraints in Journal of Arachnology. The paper is a follow-up to my 2013 paper in Journal of Insect Biology that include data on 2nd and 3rd webs built in spatially constrained experimental frames. The results show that no improvement in webs take place after the first web built in spatially constrained frame and thus suggest that (for this ability at least) behavioural flexibility in these spiders is immediate and genetically driven. The paper is also the last to come out of my Smithsonian Institution Fellowship from 2008-2009 in Panama given a total of 5 papers.
Abstract:
Orb spiders demonstrate an impressive ability to adapt their web-building behavior to a wide range of environmental and physiological factors. However, the mechanisms behind this plasticity remain poorly understood. Behavioral plasticity can be categorized as either developmental, where new neural pathways arise from learning, or activational, which rely on more costly pre-existing neural pathways. Here I argue that orb spiders and their webs in general and their response to spatial constraints in particular make an ideal model system in which to explore these two mechanisms further. I show that the spider Eustala illicita (O. Pickard-Cambridge 1889) immediately modifies its first orb web after being placed in spatially confined experimental frames without showing subsequent improvements in design of the second web. Thus, these data are in accord with the hypothesis that this spider relies on activational behavioral plasticity, which might be linked to its preferred habitat in the wild.
Hesselberg, T. (2014). The mechanism behind plasticity of web-building behavior in an orb spider facing spatial constraints. Journal of Arachnology 42: 311-314.
DOI: 10.1636/J14-05.1
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