I am senior author on a paper in the May issue of Animal Behaviour. I am particular pleased with this paper as it is based on two undergraduate research projects carried out at the University of Oxford under my supervision. The first project carried out in 2010-11 by Alex Adamson looked at general aspects of web repair behaviour in the orb spider Araneus diadematus after removal (cutting) of the anchor threads that connects the web to the vegetation (or in this laboratory study to the sides of the frames the spiders were building in). The second project carried out by Eleanor Tew in 2013-14 expanded on the first project and looked at how the repair behaviour changed in windy conditions. The paper is a synthesis of the two projects and is the first study to describe and analyse the web repair process in detail and shows that spiders in wind react faster to damage and repair their webs less efficiently than spider in no wind conditions, which suggests that spiders may be particular attuned to or more motivated to repair web damage in winds, which makes sense as wind is probably one of the main causes for web damage in the wild.
Tew, E. R., Adamson, A. and Hesselberg, T. (2015). The web repair behaviour of an orb spider. Animal Behaviour 103, 137-146.
doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.02.016
Abstract:
The study of construction behaviour and animal architecture has yielded significant insights into many areas of animal behaviour including decision making, optimal foraging and behavioural plasticity. In addition, the fitness consequences of constructing nests, protective structures and traps have been amply demonstrated. However, surprisingly little effort has gone into the study of what happens when these structures become damaged. Here we used the orb spider Araneus diadematus to explore repair behaviour of its web, with the aim of understanding environmental and structural influences on the repair process. The primary function of a spider web is to catch prey, so its structural integrity is of critical importance. However, orb webs are fragile structures and often become damaged, leading to the need to either repair or rebuild the web. Environmental conditions such as wind increase the likelihood of damage to the web. Here we first described and analysed the full repair process and quantified how effectively the repair restores structural integrity. Second, we investigated how wind affects repair behaviour and the spiders’ anticipation of damage or motivation to repair. We found that spiders followed the same sequence of behaviours to repair damage to their webs and the repair significantly increased the effective web area following damage. Spiders reacted more quickly to damage in windy conditions, suggesting that they are attuned to the greater likelihood of damage in wind. Total repair time was the same in windy and control conditions, but repair was less effective in windy conditions.
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