The effects of prey lipid on female mating and reproduction of a wolf spider

Abstract

As predators, the macronutrients spiders extract from their prey play important roles in their mating and reproduction. Previous studies of macronutrients on spider mating and reproduction focus on protein, the potential impact of prey lipid content on spider mating and reproduction remains largely unexplored. Here we tested the influence of prey varying in lipid content on female mating, sexual cannibalism, reproduction and offspring fitness in the wolf spider Pardosa pseudoannulata. We acquired two groups of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster that differed significantly in lipid but not protein content by supplementing cultural media with a high or low dose of sucrose on which the fruit flies were reared (HL: high lipid; LL: low lipid). Subadult (i.e., one molt before adult) female spiders that fed HL flies matured with significantly higher lipid content than those fed LL flies. We found that the mated females fed with HL flies significantly shortened pre-oviposition time and resulted in a significantly higher fecundity. However, there was no significant difference in female spiders varying in lipid content on other behaviors and traits, including the latency to courtship, courtship duration, mating, copulation duration, sexual cannibalism, offspring body size and survival. Hence, our results suggest that the lipid content of prey may be a limiting factor for female reproduction, but not for other behavioral traits in the wolf spiders P. pseudoannulata.

Energy Allocation of the Wolf Spider Pardosa pseudoannulata under Dietary Restriction

“…Sub-adults of P. pseudoannulata were collected from rice fields at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan City, Hubei Province in April 2018. This spider can be recognized in the field by the two dark bands on the carapace and ring-like markings on the legs [34,35]. Each spider was maintained in a glass tube (20 mm diameter, 90 mm high) with a moist sponge at the bottom and fed with Drosophila melanogaster.…”