Orientador: José Chaud Netto / Banca: Edilson Divino de Araújo / Banca: Sulene Noriko Shima / Parawixia bistriata é a única espécie da família Araneidae que apresenta comportamento social. Refúgio comunal e cooperação de caça são duas características interessantes observadas nessa espécie. O presente trabalho teve como objetivos analisar a dinâmica populacional das colônias de Parawixia bistriata durante seu desenvolvimento e estudar o comportamento de caça individual das aranhas dessa espécie. Por meio de observações de campo de sete colônias de Parawixia bistriata foi possível verificar que estas passaram por um intenso processo de forrageio, bem como de procura por um hábitat ideal, na medida em que se observa uma constante mudança no local de construção do refúgio comunal. Durante esse processo de forrageio, devido à deficiência na quantidade de recursos, bem como de espaço físico, é comum observar fissões de colônias dessa espécie. Em experimentos realizados na presente pesquisa observou-se que, apesar de ocorrer decréscimo acentuado no número de indivíduos em algumas colônias, a razão sexual das mesmas não foi alterada (1:1) no período em que foi realizada a sexagem dos indivíduos. Também foi observada uma grande tolerância entre indivíduos coespecíficos não aparentados, ou seja, de colônias não irmãs. Essa aceitação confirma a significativa existência de fusões de colônias durante o desenvolvimento dos indivíduos dessa espécie, que reforçam a idéia da formação das super-colônias, mencionada anteriormente por outros autores. No que diz respeito ao comportamento de caça individual em colônias dessa mesma espécie de aranha orbitela, observou-se que estas aranhas conseguem, de certa forma, escolher um determinado tipo de presa. Isso ocorre na medida em que se observa o total desprezo pelas presas de pequeno porte, bem como a preferência pela captura de presas de tamanho grande. Um outro fator importante é o fato de que essas... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Parawixia bistriata is the unique species of Araneidae that shows social behaviour. Communal refuge and cooperative hunting are two interesting features observed in this species. The objectives of this research were to analyze the population dynamics in colonies of Parawixia bistriata and to study the individual predatory behaviour of this species. Field observations of seven colonies of Parawixia bistriata showed that these colonies developed an intense hunting activity and search for an ideal place to build the nest. During these two activities the colonies can separate its members on account of the lack of food or space to build their webs. Although the number of spiders is significantly reduced during the development in some colonies, this research showed that the sex ratio of the colonies is almost 1:1 when it is possible to do the sexual identification. It was also noted that there is a great tolerance between spiders from different colonies and because of this there are fusions of colonies that become supercolonies. In relation to the individual predatory behaviour in Parawixia bistriata it was possible to see that this spider can recognize and choose its prey. Another experiment of this research showed that the spiders refused a small prey or left it after a while, if a bigger prey was captured. It was also observed that the spider "prefers" a big prey than a small one, and the spider feeds on a big prey in the same place of the web where it was caught. This fact can be explained by the existence of intra colonial competition for food and this behaviour maybe is a strategy to avoid the robbery of food by a co-specific that lies beside it / Mestre

Species that vary in social structure within and among populations can provide unparalleled insight into the evolution of sociality. The theridiid spider Anelosimus studiosus varies widely in its social structure at the northern edge of its range. Colony sizes range from the solitary/territorial female with her offspring to cooperative colonies of tens to hundreds of adult females. In previous work, we developed an assured fitness returns 'brood-fostering model' that predicts that in cooler environments mothers in multiple-female colonies will have a selective advantage over solitary female nests. According to the model, at cool sites the rate of juvenile maturation is slowed, increasing the probability that the mother will die before the brood reaches independence. In her absence, other females would foster her brood. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating colony size and by monitoring the reproductive success of naturally occurring solitary and multifemale colonies in cold and warm temperature environments. Our results indicate that while multiple-female colonies have higher fitness at cool sites, the solitary female nests achieve higher fitness at warmer sites. The higher reproductive success of multifemale colonies at cold sites further reflects the total failure of solitary female nests at these sites. Solitary female nests that survived generally had higher reproductive success than multifemale colonies at all temperatures. In natural colonies, fitness was highest for smaller multifemale colonies in the colder environments and decreased in the larger colonies. We use these data to refine the brood-fostering model and discuss the results with regard to the observed polymorphism in social structure.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:30:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2005-04-07Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:18:45Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 barbieri_ef_me_rcla.pdf: 850116 bytes, checksum: 1746f10eae01263d21d6e490a44a4098 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Parawixia bistriata é a única espécie da família Araneidae que apresenta comportamento social. Refúgio comunal e cooperação de caça são duas características interessantes observadas nessa espécie. O presente trabalho teve como objetivos analisar a dinâmica populacional das colônias de Parawixia bistriata durante seu desenvolvimento e estudar o comportamento de caça individual das aranhas dessa espécie. Por meio de observações de campo de sete colônias de Parawixia bistriata foi possível verificar que estas passaram por um intenso processo de forrageio, bem como de procura por um hábitat ideal, na medida em que se observa uma constante mudança no local de construção do refúgio comunal. Durante esse processo de forrageio, devido à deficiência na quantidade de recursos, bem como de espaço físico, é comum observar fissões de colônias dessa espécie. Em experimentos realizados na presente pesquisa observou-se que, apesar de ocorrer decréscimo acentuado no número de indivíduos em algumas colônias, a razão sexual das mesmas não foi alterada (1:1) no período em que foi realizada a sexagem dos indivíduos. Também foi observada uma grande tolerância entre indivíduos coespecíficos não aparentados, ou seja, de colônias não irmãs. Essa aceitação confirma a significativa existência de fusões de colônias durante o desenvolvimento dos indivíduos dessa espécie, que reforçam a idéia da formação das super-colônias, mencionada anteriormente por outros autores. No que diz respeito ao comportamento de caça individual em colônias dessa mesma espécie de aranha orbitela, observou-se que estas aranhas conseguem, de certa forma, escolher um determinado tipo de presa. Isso ocorre na medida em que se observa o total desprezo pelas presas de pequeno porte, bem como a preferência pela captura de presas de tamanho grande. Um outro fator importante é o fato de que essas... . / Parawixia bistriata is the unique species of Araneidae that shows social behaviour. Communal refuge and cooperative hunting are two interesting features observed in this species. The objectives of this research were to analyze the population dynamics in colonies of Parawixia bistriata and to study the individual predatory behaviour of this species. Field observations of seven colonies of Parawixia bistriata showed that these colonies developed an intense hunting activity and search for an ideal place to build the nest. During these two activities the colonies can separate its members on account of the lack of food or space to build their webs. Although the number of spiders is significantly reduced during the development in some colonies, this research showed that the sex ratio of the colonies is almost 1:1 when it is possible to do the sexual identification. It was also noted that there is a great tolerance between spiders from different colonies and because of this there are fusions of colonies that become supercolonies. In relation to the individual predatory behaviour in Parawixia bistriata it was possible to see that this spider can recognize and choose its prey. Another experiment of this research showed that the spiders refused a small prey or left it after a while, if a bigger prey was captured. It was also observed that the spider prefers a big prey than a small one, and the spider feeds on a big prey in the same place of the web where it was caught. This fact can be explained by the existence of intra colonial competition for food and this behaviour maybe is a strategy to avoid the robbery of food by a co-specific that lies beside it.

Correlated individual differences in behaviour across ecological contexts, or behavioural syndromes, can theoretically constrain individuals' ability to optimally adjust their behaviour for specific contexts.Female Anelosimus studiosus exhibit a unique behavioural polymorphism: 'social' females are tolerant of conspecifics and aggregate in multi-female colonies, while 'solitary' females aggressively defend their singleton webs from intrusion by adult female conspecifics. Previous work found that social females are also less aggressive toward prey and are more fearful of predators.In this study we quantify potential fitness consequences of these correlated behaviours by examining the potential and realised fecundities of the two phenotypes in naturally occurring colonies, and by quantifying their ability to rear offspring as singleton individuals.There were no differences in the fecundities of laboratory-reared females between the phenotypes, nor were there differences in field-collected brooding females from naturally occurring solitary and social nests.Brooding females from solitary and social colonies that were isolated in new nests for the growing season were both capable of rearing their broods; however, females from solitary nests had significantly greater success.These results suggest a fitness consequence to the reduced-aggression syndrome of social females that may represent a general impediment to the evolution of sociality in spiders.

In this paper, we develop a stochastic differential equation model to simulate the movement of a social/subsocial spider species, Anelosimus studiosus, during prey capture using experimental data collected in a structured environment. In a subsocial species, females and their maturing offspring share a web and cooperate in web maintenance and prey capture. Furthermore, observations indicate these colonies change their positioning throughout the day, clustered during certain times of the day while spaced out at other times. One key question was whether or not the spiders spaced out "optimally" to cooperate in prey capture. In this paper, we first show the derivation of the model where experimental data is used to determine key parameters within the model. We then use this model to test the success of prey capture under a variety of different spatial configurations for varying colony sizes to determine the best spatial configuration for prey capture.

Microclimates associated with environmental and geographic factors directly affect the ability of an organism to survive in a particular area. Survival is affected by: predator/prey abundance, temperature, relative humidity. A group of organisms that are particularly prone to habitat sensitivity are web-building spiders, because building the web commits them to a particular site for a period of time. Anelosimus studiosus is a small (~8 mm) Theridiid spider that exhibits varying degrees of sociality: a subsocial phenotype and a social phenotype. Population densities of A. studiosus vary significantly among seemingly suitable habitats within its range in east Tennessee. I conducted a large-scale survey of east Tennessee lake systems to establish connections between spider presence and geographic features such as aspect, slope and elevation. These geographic features were shown to have a strong impact on overall spider density.