Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 44, Part 3, September 1992, Pages 485-499
Animal Behaviour

A trap-building predator exhibits different tactics for different aspects of foraging behaviour

https://doi.org/10.1016/0003-3472(92)90058-HGet rights and content

Abstract

Orb-web spiders present a particularly informative system for the analysis of foraging strategies because foraging investment, as measured by web size and foraging bout length, is temporally disjunct from decisions determining diet breadth. This decoupling allows simultaneous consideration of both aspects of foraging behaviour. The orb-weaving spider, Nephila clavipes, exhibits variation in foraging bout length, orb-web structure and diet that may reflect different strategic responses to different rates of prey capture. Within each of three study populations, orb size increased with spider size. Spiders built larger orbs relative to spider size during times of decreased mean rate of prey capture. Similarly, decreased mean prey capture corresponded to longer foraging bouts among populations. In contrast, diet breadth did not increase with decreasing mean prey capture. The changes in foraging investment follow the predictions of optimal foraging behaviour, whereas the changes in patterns of prey rejection can be explained as physiological limitations such as water requirements during the dry season.

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