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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on April 28, 2006
Behavioral Ecology 2006 17(4):586-590; doi:10.1093/beheco/ark003
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Burrow decorations as antipredatory devices

Jennifer L. Williamsa,b, Jordi Moya-Larañoa,c and David H. Wisea

a Department of Entomology, S-225 Agricultural Science Building-North, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0091, USA, b Department of Entomology, University of Arizona, Forbes 410, PO Box 2100: (36), Tucson, AZ 85721-003, USA, and c Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, CSIC, General Segura 1, Almería 04001, Spain

Address correspondence to J. Moya-Laraño. E-mail: jordi{at}eeza.csic.es.

Animal decorations are normally interpreted as signals of quality. In spiders, however, decorations may have different functions, including the attraction of prey to the web or making the spider cryptic to predators. To date, there is scant evidence for the latter hypothesis. Here we use the burrow-decorating wolf spider Lycosa tarantula to test whether turrets around the burrow serve to prevent burrow invasion and predation from the Occitan scorpion Buthus occitanus. We located spiders and scorpions in field enclosures and manipulated the presence or absence of decorations or turrets. We found that the presence of the turret decreases the rate of burrow invasion and improves spider survival, possibly because the turret makes the burrow cryptic to scorpions. In addition, a field survey showed that burrows with larger decorations had a lower chance of being invaded by scorpions. These results provide evidence that the decoration has an antipredatory function in nature.

Key words: antipredatory mechanisms, burrowing wolf spiders, coexistence, decorations, intraguild predation, Scorpiones.


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