Optical cues used in prey identification by a juvenile jumping spider, Yllenus arenarius (Araneae, Salticidae)

Abstract

REVIEWER Frank ZachosTYPESETTING Maciej Bartos COVER DESIGN Joanna Skopińska COVER PHOTO Adult female of Yllenus arenarius with a captured fly (photo by Maciej Bartos)Printed directly from camera-ready materials provided to the Łódź University Press

Biological relevance affects object recognition in jumping spiders

“…Although a few individuals chose the circle (roughly half the number that chose the other stimuli), it is not entirely surprising that the spiders categorise the circle as a prey item. Many generalist predators, including some salticids, categorise stimuli as prey using only basic key features (Drees 1952;Barlow 1953;Lettvin et al 1959;Heinze et al 1998;Prete et al 2011;Bartos 2013). What is somewhat surprising was the high attrition rate in this experiment, as salticids typically readily respond to stimuli in the lab (Harland et al 1999).…”

“…Bednarski et al 2012show that the salticid Phidippus audax (Hentz, 1845) uses stimulus movement as the key element for categorisation as prey, thus adopting a very large perceptual envelope of this category (including a moving rectangle). In a similar set of studies, Bartos (2007Bartos ( , 2013 showed that the salticid Yllenus arenarius Menge 1868 uses four key elements (stimulus length, movement type, congruent location of body parts and number of appendages) for the classification of a stimulus as prey. Furthermore, stimulus length and type of movement are used for classification into two prey categories with distinct escape risks requiring different attack strategies.…”