Sensory systems can capture only a fraction of available information, which creates opportunities for deceptive signalling. The sensory traps and sensory bias models have proven valuable for explaining how visual systems and environments shape the design of sexual signals, but their application to deceptive signals is largely limited to the context of pollination. Here we use the ‘jewelled’ orb-web spider Gasteracantha fornicata to experimentally test two longstanding hypotheses for the function of deceptive visual lures. Namely, that they: (1) exploit generalised preferences for conspicuous colouration (sensory bias), or (2) co-opt the otherwise-adaptive foraging response of prey toward flowers (sensory traps). In a field-based study we manipulated the conspicuous dorsal signals of female spiders along two axes—colour pattern and symmetry—to generate a gradient of floral resemblance and monitored the per-individual consequences for prey interception. As predicted by the sensory traps model, the most attractive phenotypes were those with flower-like radial symmetry and solid colour patterns, and their attractiveness equaled that of natural spiders. Taken with recent work demonstrating a close resemblance between G. fornicata and sympatric floral ‘models’, and pollinating insects as primary prey items, our results suggest that the deceptive colour-based lures of spiders function as inter-kingdom sensory traps via floral mimicry, and support the broader extension of sensory-based models to deceptive signalling contexts.

中文翻译：

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蜘蛛诱饵利用昆虫对花色和对称性的偏好

感官系统只能捕获一小部分可用信息，这为欺骗性信号创造了机会。感官陷阱和感官偏差模型已被证明对于解释视觉系统和环境如何塑造性信号的设计很有价值，但它们对欺骗性信号的应用在很大程度上仅限于授粉的背景。在这里，我们使用“宝石镶嵌”的天体网蜘蛛 Gasteracantha fornicata 来实验测试两个长期存在的关于欺骗性视觉诱惑功能的假设。也就是说，它们：（1）利用对显着颜色的普遍偏好（感官偏见），或（2）选择猎物对花朵的适应性觅食反应（感官陷阱）。在一项实地研究中，我们沿着两个轴——颜色模式和对称性——操纵了雌性蜘蛛显眼的背部信号，以产生花卉相似度的梯度，并监测每个个体对猎物拦截的后果。正如感官陷阱模型预测的那样，最具吸引力的表型是那些具有花朵状径向对称和纯色图案的表型，它们的吸引力与天然蜘蛛相当。结合最近的工作证明 G. fornicata 和同域花卉“模型”之间的相似之处，以及作为主要猎物的授粉昆虫，我们的结果表明，蜘蛛的欺骗性基于颜色的诱惑通过花卉模仿作为跨界感官陷阱，并支持将基于感官的模型更广泛地扩展到欺骗性信号环境。