In animals, it is known that age affects the abilities of the brain. In spiders, we showed that aging affects web characteristics due to behavioral alterations during web building. In this study, we investigated the effects of age on the associations between morphological changes to the spider brain and changes in web characteristics. The orb web spider Zygiella x-notata (Araneae, Araneidae) was used to test these relationships. Experiments were conducted on young (19 ± 2 days after adult molt, N = 13) and old (146 ± 32 days, N = 20) virgin females. The brain volume decreased with age (by 10%). Age also had an impact on the number of anomalies in the capture area generated during web building. The statistical relationships between the volume of the brain and web characteristics showed that there was an effect of age on both. Our results showed that in spiders, aging affects the brain volume and correlates with characteristics (anomalies) of the web. As web building is the result of complex behavioral processes, we suggest that aging affects spider behavior by causing some brain alterations.

中文翻译：

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衰老对圆网蜘蛛脑和网特性的影响

在动物中，众所周知，年龄会影响大脑的能力。在蜘蛛中，我们表明由于网络构建过程中的行为改变，老化会影响网络特性。在这项研究中，我们调查了年龄对蜘蛛大脑形态变化与网特征变化之间关联的影响。球网蜘蛛 Zygiella x-notata（Araneae，Araneidae）用于测试这些关系。对年轻（成年蜕皮后 19 ± 2 天，N = 13）和老年（146 ± 32 天，N = 20）处女雌性进行了实验。脑容量随着年龄的增长而减少（减少 10%）。年龄也对网络构建期间生成的捕获区域中的异常数量产生影响。大脑体积和网络特征之间的统计关系表明，年龄对两者都有影响。我们的结果表明，在蜘蛛中，衰老会影响大脑容量并与网络的特征（异常）相关联。由于网络构建是复杂行为过程的结果，我们建议衰老通过引起一些大脑改变来影响蜘蛛的行为。