The communication signals of jumping spiders from the point of sensory physiology and behavioral ecology.
Abstract
Animals have to release and receive important communication signals in their environment to enhance survival and reproductive success. Constrained by the physical properties of the environment, not all sorts of sensory and communication signals are equally effective. Therefore, the physical characteristics of environments the organisms inhabit will shape the evolution of various properties of communication signals. Jumping spiders use multimodal communication signals to interact with conspecifics and therefore they are good model organisms to study the evolution of communication systems. In this study, we will first use electro-physiological approaches to realize how visual and auditory systems of various species of jumping spiders’work. Such information will be combined with these species’visual, auditory and vibration signal properties, behavioral responses and environmental characteristics to comprehensively assess the evolution of jumping spider multimodal communication systems. In this study, we will also collect nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences of various spider species to construct a molecular phylogeny of major jumping spider taxa. Such phylogeny will be combined with recorded properties of sensory systems and communication signals to assess the evolution of multimodal communication systems in the jumping spider family Salticidae. Besides, we will also collect the DNA and amino acid sequences of opsin protein and quantifying their light absorption properties then used the molecular phylogeny to examine the evolutionary pattern of opsins in Araneae. Information obtained from behavioral, physiological and evolutional approaches will be integrated to comprehensively study how environmental characteristics shaped the evolution of multimodal communication systems in jumping spiders.
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Updated: Nov-13-2020 04:47:00 (Taiwan, GMT+08:00).