Arthropod Intelligence? The Case for Portia

Cross, Fiona R.; Carvell, Georgina E.; Jackson, Robert R.; Grace, Randolph C.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.568049

Cited by 41 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…The expectancy–violation paradigm was successfully adopted in the research on P. africana (reviewed in Cross et al 2020 ). Cross and Jackson ( 2014 ) adopted an expectancy-violation method for investigating whether the jumping spider P. africana can represent a specific prey type during predatory sequences.…”

Section: Methodologies For Studying Quantitative Abilities In Inverte...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review

2021

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Quantitative abilities are widely recognized to play important roles in several ecological contexts, such as foraging, mate choice, and social interaction. Indeed, such abilities are widespread among vertebrates, in particular mammals, birds, and fish. Recently, there has been an increasing number of studies on the quantitative abilities of invertebrates. In this review, we present the current knowledge in this field, especially focusing on the ecological relevance of the capacity to process quantitative information, the similarities with vertebrates, and the different methods adopted to investigate this cognitive skill. The literature argues, beyond methodological differences, a substantial similarity between the quantitative abilities of invertebrates and those of vertebrates, supporting the idea that similar ecological pressures may determine the emergence of similar cognitive systems even in distantly related species.

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Section: Methodologies For Studying Quantitative Abilities In Inverte...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review

2021

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“…Among such behavioral patterns are feeding, drinking, detecting and pursuing prey, navigating, attracting mates, mating, fighting, and care for offspring, all adapted to sustain physiological homeostasis and/or reproductive fitness of a given organism in its ecological niche (examples in e.g., Tinbergen, 1951 , 1963 ; Lorenz, 1981 ; Wang, 2020 ). An interesting example of innate, complex prey-catching strategies of a jumping spider has been reviewed by Cross et al (2020) .…”

Section: Awareness and Consciousness In Animals And Their Relationshi...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective

Ehret

Romand

2022

Front. Syst. Neurosci.

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Awareness or consciousness in the context of stimulus perception can directly be assessed in well controlled test situations with humans via the persons’ reports about their subjective experiences with the stimuli. Since we have no direct access to subjective experiences in animals, their possible awareness or consciousness in stimulus perception tasks has often been inferred from behavior and cognitive abilities previously observed in aware and conscious humans. Here, we analyze published human data primarily on event-related potentials and brain-wave generation during perception and responding to sensory stimuli and extract neural markers (mainly latencies of evoked-potential peaks and of gamma-wave occurrence) indicating that a person became aware or conscious of the perceived stimulus. These neural correlates of consciousness were then applied to sets of corresponding data from various animals including several species of mammals, and one species each of birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects. We found that the neural markers from studies in humans could also successfully be applied to the mammal and bird data suggesting that species in these animal groups can become subjectively aware of and conscious about perceived stimuli. Fish, cephalopod and insect data remained inconclusive. In an evolutionary perspective we have to consider that both awareness of and consciousness about perceived stimuli appear as evolved, attention-dependent options added to the ongoing neural activities of stimulus processing and action generation. Since gamma-wave generation for functional coupling of brain areas in aware/conscious states is energetically highly cost-intensive, it remains to be shown which animal species under which conditions of lifestyle and ecological niche may achieve significant advantages in reproductive fitness by drawing upon these options. Hence, we started our discussion about awareness and consciousness in animals with the question in how far these expressions of brain activity are necessary attributes for perceiving stimuli and responding in an adaptive way.

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“…Arachnid cases in point are the amazing novel problem-solving capacities of jumping spiders Portia spp. (Cross et al, 2020), the orb-weaving Cyclosa spp. creating spider-like decoys to fool predators (Tseng and Tso, 2009;Drake, 2014) or social experience-based attentional shifts in phytoseiid predatory mites (Strodl and Schausberger, 2012).…”

Section: Conceptual Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grand challenges and bold opportunities in arachnid ecology and behavior

Schausberger

2022

Front. Arachn. Sci.

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BackgroundThe Arachnida represent a mega-diverse lineage within the Arthropoda and are the second largest (speciose) class of invertebrates (first are the insects with around 955.000 described species), with about 91.200 (https://www.catalogueoflife.org/) to 114.200 (Zhang, 2013) species named and described (90% of which are spiders and mites/ticks) but an estimated 1 to 1.5 million species, especially mites, waiting to be detected and named (Krantz and Walter, 2009;Walter and Proctor, 2013;Zhang, 2013). The number of currently known arachnid species is more than all vertebrates together, although the arachnid species number is just about 1/10 th to 1/15 th of the estimated number of species truly present, yet is in comparison close to being complete in the vertebrates (70.300 described species) (https://www.catalogueoflife.org/). Arachnids are similar to insects in evolutionary success and history. The fossil history of the Chelicerata, to which the Arachnida belong to, dates back to 500 million years ago. The Arachnida comprise groups, such as the Acari (mites and ticks), that are extremely diverse and can be found about anywhere in the world, from aquatic to terrestrial, from rainforests to deserts, from mountain tops to valleys, from the icy Arctic and Antarctic to burning hot deserts (Krantz and Walter, 2009;Walter and Proctor, 2013), while others are almost exclusively terrestrial but similarly diverse in habitat use, i.e. the Araneae (spiders), with just one truly aquatic species (e.g. Foelix 2010, Dimitrov and Hormiga, 2021). While the Araneae are comparatively homogenous in foraging stylesall are true predators and most are prey generalists, yet showing an impressive array of true predation styles, from ambushing to active hunting to luring and trappingthe Acari are very diverse, from strictly parasitic throughout life, to changing between parasitic and free-living, to living on the same host throughout life and over several generations, to changing hosts to being always free-living, from fungivores, detritivores to herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, from habitat and diet generalists to extreme specialists exploiting just one type of food or individual host (e.g. Walter and Proctor, 2013). Extreme diversity and variability also apply to reproductive modes, which span from sexual direct and indirect sperm transfer to asexual cloning (thelytoky). Together, the arachnids are mega-diverse in all major aspects of ecology and behavior.The grand challenges presented here are viewed from an arachnid perspective though some are not specific to arachnids, as are some overarching questions addressed in arachnid research. The challenges and opportunities mentioned are not meant to be exhaustive, are certainly partly subjective and growing out of own current interests and Frontiers in Arachnid Science frontiersin.org 01

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Arthropod Intelligence? The Case for Portia

Cited by 41 publications

References 94 publications

Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review

Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review

Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective

Grand challenges and bold opportunities in arachnid ecology and behavior

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