Ants and jumping spiders are prominent invertebrate predators in terrestrial ecosystems. Many jumping spiders are thought to avoid ants and their ant mimicking spiders, yet little is known if they discriminate among different species of ants or mimics. Chances of encountering multiple ants, and mimics all in a relatively short stretch of time and space is fairly common in the tropics, but how all these species interact with each other is not known. In a laboratory setup, we first examined the behavioral response of three ant species (Oecophylla smaragdina, the weaver ants; Camponotus sericeus, the golden backed carpenter ants, and Leptogenys processionalis, the procession ants), and their mimics in the genus Myrmarachne towards the non-mimetic jumping spider Plexippus paykulli. We then examined the response of P paykulli towards the three ant species, and their mimics. Our results suggest that weaver ants and procession ants are more aggressive towards non-mimetic jumping spiders as compared to golden backed ants. The three mimics also differed in their response towards the non-mimetic jumping spider: both weaver ant mimics and golden backed ant mimics charged at the non-mimetic jumping spiders as compared to the procession ant mimics. On the other hand, P. paykulli did not treat all ants similarly: while they looked, and approached the black procession ants by visual cues, they stayed away from weaver ants and golden backed ants. However, P. paykulli treated the three ant mimicking spiders similarly: while they looked at the mimics, they rarely approached or attacked them. Jumping spiders and ants are sympatric, and it may be advantageous to selectively avoid some ants over others. Studies, such as ours go a step closer in understanding multispecies predator–prey interactions.

中文翻译：

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非拟态跳蛛对三种蚂蚁及其拟态的反应

蚂蚁和跳蛛是陆地生态系统中突出的无脊椎动物捕食者。许多跳蛛被认为会避开蚂蚁和它们的模仿蚂蚁的蜘蛛，但它们是否区分不同种类的蚂蚁或模仿物却知之甚少。在热带地区，遇到多种蚂蚁并在相对较短的时间和空间内模仿所有蚂蚁的机会相当普遍，但尚不清楚所有这些物种如何相互作用。在实验室设置中，我们首先检查了三种蚂蚁物种（Oecophylla smaragdina，编织蚂蚁；Camponotus sericeus，金背木蚁和 Leptogenys processionalis，游行蚂蚁）及其在 Myrmarachne 属中的模仿物非拟态跳蛛 Plexippus paykulli。然后我们检查了 P paykulli 对三种蚂蚁及其模仿物的反应。我们的结果表明，与金背蚁相比，织布蚁和行进蚁对非拟态跳蛛更具攻击性。这三种模拟物对非模拟跳蛛的反应也不同：与游行蚂蚁模拟物相比，编织蚂蚁模拟物和金背蚂蚁模拟物都对非模拟跳跃蜘蛛充电。另一方面，P. paykulli 并没有对所有蚂蚁都采取同样的方式：当它们通过视觉线索观察并接近黑色游行蚂蚁时，它们远离织布蚁和金背蚁。然而，P. paykulli 对三只蚂蚁模仿蜘蛛的处理方式相似：当它们看着模仿物时，很少接近或攻击它们。跳跃的蜘蛛和蚂蚁是同域的，选择性地避开某些蚂蚁可能比其他蚂蚁更有利。像我们这样的研究在理解多物种捕食者-猎物相互作用方面更进了一步。