Item Details

title

Multi-Sensory Modalities in the Functional Mechanisms of Tigrosa georgicola Attack Behaviors

author

Repetto, Abigail Marie

abstract

A notable yet unpublished wolf spider predation behavior is the “flip attack,” where anattacking spider will rotate its body to flip onto its back with the prey suspended above the spider by the legs. Tigrosa georgicola use the flip attack significantly more often on prey spiders than crickets, and on larger prey spiders over smaller prey spiders. Flipping rates were recorded for 7 groups to assess the role of vision (experiments done by Nandan Patel and Hayden Graser), mechanosensation (experiments done by Abigail Repetto), and chemosensation (experiments done by Crawford Tanner and Lydia Faber) in prey identification. The flipping rate of both prey types were unaltered by complete blinding and heterotypic odor manipulation, but approached a significantly lower rate for spiders with complete metatarsal lyriform organ ablations attacking prey spiders. Completely blind spiders showed a loss of size discrimination, as they flipped prey small enough to be unlikely to receive a flip attack at higher frequencies than wild type spiders did. Selective blinding did not show a significantly higher flipping of smaller prey but posterior blind spiders showed a slightly elevated flip rate. These results indicate that visual cues (from posterior eyes in particular though all eye sets play a role) inform prey characteristics such as prey size, while mechanosensory cues signal prey type. The high flip rate of crickets by spiders with some mechanosensory hairs removed indicates a need for further investigations into cross-modal processing of prey detection and behavioral output to better

subject

Arachnids

Lycosidae

Lyriform

Sensation

Vibration

Vision

contributor

Johnson, Erik (advisor)

Lack, Anna Kate (committee member)

date

2023-07-25T17:48:43Z (accessioned)

2023 (issued)

degree

Neuroscience – MS (discipline)

embargo

2028-05-13 (terms)

2028-05-13 (liftdate)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/102266 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis