Visual Perception in the Brain of a Jumping Spider

Abstract

Jumping spiders (Salticidae) are renowned for a behavioral repertoire that can seem more vertebrate, or even mammalian, than spider-like in character. This is made possible by a unique visual system that supports their stalking hunting style and elaborate mating rituals in which the bizarrely marked and colored appendages of males highlight their song-and-dance displays. Salticids perform these tasks with information from four pairs of functionally specialized eyes, providing a near 360° field of view and forward-looking spatial resolution surpassing that of all insects and even some mammals, processed by a brain roughly the size of a poppy seed. Salticid behavior, evolution, and ecology are well documented, but attempts to study the neurophysiological basis of their behavior had been thwarted by the pressurized nature of their internal body fluids, making typical physiological techniques infeasible and restricting all previous neural work in salticids to a few recordings from the eyes. We report the first survey of neurophysiological recordings from the brain of a jumping spider, Phidippus audax (Salticidae). The data include single-unit recordings in response to artificial and naturalistic visual stimuli. The salticid visual system is unique in that high-acuity and motion vision are processed by different pairs of eyes. We found nonlinear interactions between the principal and secondary eyes, which can be inferred from the emergence of spatiotemporal receptive fields. Ecologically relevant images, including prey-like objects such as flies, elicited bursts of excitation from single units.

Sensory system plasticity in a visually specialized, nocturnal spider

“…The neuroethology of spiders remains largely unexplored, especially as compared to the plethora of neuroethological studies conducted on their arthropod relatives – the insects185152535455– making foundational studies such as this incredibly valuable. We are encouraged by recent strides in spider brain research56575859.…”

3D Printing in the Laboratory: Maximize Time and Funds with Customized and Open-Source Labware

“…Because the head cavity is highly pressurized, inserting electrodes would cause “catastrophic fluid loss.” 10 Their “spider holder” uses dental wax, a soldering iron, and a specifically designed 3D-printed plastic platform. 11 …”

Visual Discrimination Learning in the Jumping Spider Phidippus regius

“…We tested Phidippus regius (Koch, 1846), a species belonging to the family of Salticidae that has been successfully tested through a variety of methodologies, such as conditioning (Jakob, Skow, Haberman, & Plourde, 2007;Liedtke & Schneider, 2014;Peckmezian & Taylor, 2015a), using simulated environments (Peckmezian & Taylor, 2015b) and even using neurophysiological recording techniques (Menda, Shamble, Nitzany, Golden, & Hoy, 2014). A previous study (Bednarski, Taylor, & Jakob, 2012) tested the ability of jumping spiders to discriminate between the moving image of a cricket (meaningful) and a moving rectangle (abstract), but the animals seemed unable to learn to discriminate between the two.…”