Pheromones exert top-down effects on visual recognition in the jumping spiderLyssomanes viridis

Abstract

SUMMARYIn diverse and productive habitats, predaceous arthropods are expected to frequently encounter dangerous conspecifics and heterospecifics. This should make quick and accurate discriminations between species and sexes adaptive. By simultaneously sampling both visual cues and pheromones, and by utilizing stringent species-and sex-specific visual recognition templates, an individual should be able to increase both its speed and accuracy in making such discriminations. We tested for the use and stringency of visual recognition templates in the jumping spider Lyssomanes viridis by presenting males with animated images of conspecifics, heterospecifics and composite images that combined the facial coloration and morphology of one sex or species with the leg coloration of another. Malesʼ courtship versus threat displays indicated whether a stimulus was perceived as a potential mate or a threat. By comparing malesʼ visual inspection times of, and display types towards, the various images in the presence versus absence of female pheromones, we were able to deduce whether males tend to inspect a subset of the color pattern and morphological features that make up their conspecific recognition templates (i.e. those on just the face or just the legs), or all features, and whether this changes in the presence of pheromones. We found that the male recognition template for conspecific female was surprisingly coarse, whereas the recognition template for conspecific male, and especially the male face, was more specific. Pheromones hastened the recognition of images with coloration and morphology closely matching those of conspecifics, presumably by activating conspecific visual recognition templates. When males were presented with an image that was, overall, a poor match to a conspecific female, but that contained a subset of female or female-like features, female pheromones usually did not hasten recognition, but did increase the likelihood that the image would be identified as a female. Taken together, our data suggest that males examined features on both the face and the legs in both the presence and absence of pheromones, and that female pheromones tipped the balance in favor of a female identification when a male was unsure how to categorize an incongruous set of visual features. Supplementary material available online at

Technical and conceptual considerations for using animated stimuli in studies of animal behavior

“…In a number of recent studies, test animals were presented left-right/up-down swimming movements of 2D fish stimuli animated from images in Microsoft PowerPoint ( Amcoff et al 2013 ; Fischer et al 2014 ; Levy et al 2014 ; Balzarini et al 2017 ), or other image editing software such as GIMP ( Baldauf et al 2011 ; see Supplementary Table S2 ). Keyframed animation, which has been applied to the study of courtship and agonistic behavior of jumping spiders Lyssomanes viridis , can be created using the program Adobe After Effects ( Tedore and Johnsen 2013 , 2015 ). Details on image editing software are available in Supplementary Table S2 .…”

Disentangling the visual cues used by a jumping spider to locate its microhabitat

“…Housing conditions were as described previously (Tedore and Johnsen, 2013). Photoperiod was regulated by a timer that followed the natural outdoor photoperiod in the North Carolina Piedmont.…”

Research with Chemistry and Pharmacology of Natural Products in Brazil: A Comparison with 70 Selected Countries from 5 Continents

“…[7][8][9] Karlson and Butenendt s 3 and Law and Rengier s 4 article were limited to pheromones. However, today it is also well established that pheromones and other semiochemicals (or small molecules, as Meinwald 7 called them) are found in microorganisms [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] , amphibinas [17][18][19][20][21] , spiders [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] , birds [29][30][31][32][33] , marine organisms [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] , non-human mammals [42][43][44][45][46] , and humans. [47][48][49][50][51][52][53] According to Verpoorte 54 there are some 250,000 of such 'natural products' and some 4,000 new ones are reported ev...…”