In the April issue of Journalf o Arachnology, I have, together with the Costa Rican student Emilia Triana, a paper entitled ‘The web of the acacia orb-spider Eustala illicita (Araneae: Araneidae) with notes on its natural history’. The work in the paper was conducted during my postdoc at STRI in Panama from 2008 to 2009.
Hesselberg, T. and Triana, E. (2010). The web of the acacia orb-spider Eustala illicita (Araneae: Araneidae) with notes on its natural history. Journal of Arachnology, 38:21-26.
The paper can be accessed here if you have an institutional licence. If not you are welcome to contact me for a copy.
Abstract
A great number of spiders build orb-webs and although the overall structure is the result of fixed behavioral patterns, much small-scale inter- and intraspecific variation is nonetheless evident. Thus in order to fully understand the orb-web and web-building behavior in these spiders, we need to study substantial samples of many different species of orb-weavers. However, to date only a few species have been rigorously studied both in the field and in the laboratory. Here, we investigate the ecology, behavior and orb-web of the neotropical spider Eustala illicita (O. Pickard-Cambridge 1889) and suggest it as suitable for further studies based on 1) the ease at which it can be located in abundant numbers in the field, 2) its willingness to build webs in the laboratory, 3) the plasticity of its behavior, and 4) its interesting ecology in the form of interactions with the swollen-thorn acacias and their ant mutualists. Here, we introduce its natural history and then provide a detailed description of orb-webs built in the field and in the laboratory, which we compare to other orb-spiders.
Resumen
Un gran número de arañas construyen telas orbiculares y, a pesar de que la estructura es el resultado de patrones fijos de comportamiento, resulta evidente la variación inter e intraespecífica a pequeñas escalas. Para lograr entender las telas orbiculares y el comportamiento de construcción en estas arañas, es necesario estudiar un número considerable de diferentes especies tejedoras de telas orbiculares. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha pocas han sido rigurosamente estudiadas tanto en el campo como en el laboratorio. En este trabajo investigamos la ecología, el comportamiento y la tela orbicular de la araña neotropical Eustala illicita y la sugerimos como una especie apta para futuros estudios basados en: i) la facilidad para ubicarla en el campo en números abundantes, ii) su voluntad de construir tela en laboratorio, iii) la plasticidad de su comportamiento y iv) su interesante interacción con las acacias y sus hormigas mutualistas. Aquí introducimos su historia natural, y describimos detalladamente sus telas orbiculares construidas en el campo y el laboratorio y las comparamos con otras especies.
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