Male courtship serves multiple functions in addition to inducing females to accept them as a mate. In predatory species, male courtship can function to reduce the risk of sexual cannibalism. This is particularly important in web-building spiders in which males risk being mistaken for prey when they enter the female’s predatory trap—the web—in order to commence courtship. Male spiders generate vibrations by shuddering in the female’s web. Shudder vibrations can delay female aggression, even toward prey struggling in the web. We predicted that shudder vibrations are highly conserved across species of web-building spider as males all face the same constraint of not being mistaken for prey by females. We examined how conserved shudder vibrations are across web-building spiders by testing whether female Trichonephila plumipes delay aggressive behavior toward real prey struggling in the web during playback of conspecific or heterospecific (Argiope keyserlingi) male shudder vibrations. We found that while conspecific shudder vibrations do indeed delay female predatory behavior, heterospecific male shudder vibrations do not. There is evidence of shudder or shudder-like vibrations in male courtship behavior across web-building spider families, but these vary in structure. This suggests that despite strong constraints on courtship signal design to separate predatory responses from sexual responses, there is additional selection driving the divergence of signals across distantly related spider species.

中文翻译：

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雄性求爱降低了结网蜘蛛中雌性攻击性的风险，但结构不同

男性求爱除了诱导女性接受他们作为配偶外，还具有多种功能。在掠食性物种中，雄性求爱可以降低性食人的风险。这在结网蜘蛛中尤为重要，当雄性进入雌性的捕食陷阱——网——以开始求爱时，它们可能会被误认为是猎物。雄性蜘蛛通过在雌性网中颤抖来产生振动。颤抖的振动可以延缓雌性的攻击性，甚至是对在网上挣扎的猎物。我们预测，由于雄性都面临着不会被雌性误认为猎物的相同限制，因此在各种结网蜘蛛中，颤抖的振动是高度保守的。我们通过测试在播放同种或异种 (Argiope keyserlingi) 雄性颤抖振动期间雌性毛毛虫是否会延迟对在网上挣扎的真正猎物的攻击性行为，研究了如何在建网蜘蛛中保持颤抖振动。我们发现，虽然同种颤抖确实会延迟雌性掠食行为，但异种雄性颤抖不会。有证据表明，在建网蜘蛛家族的男性求爱行为中会出现颤抖或类似颤抖的振动，但这些在结构上有所不同。这表明，尽管求偶信号设计有很强的限制，以将掠夺性反应与性反应区分开来，但还有额外的选择推动了远缘蜘蛛物种之间信号的分歧。