Weathering the storm for love? The mate-searching behaviour of wild male Sydney funnel-web spiders (Atrax robustus)

The risky business of mate-searching often leaves the actively searching sex facing threats and rapidly changing conditions. Yet, active mate-searching behaviour is rarely studied in invertebrates, and we have limited understanding of how mate-searching strategies have evolved to cope with risks posed by harsh weather. We investigated how mate-searching males move through their habitat and how their movement is affected by weather conditions in the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus), one of the world’s most venomous spiders. As is common in mygalomorphs spiders, females are functionally sessile, and are thought to spend their whole lives in a single burrow, whereas males must permanently abandon their burrows to mate during the breeding season. Nineteen male spiders were fitted with micro-radio transmitters and tracked during their mating seasons in 2020 (n = 2), 2021 (n = 8) and 2022 (n = 9) in Lane Cove National Park, in Sydney, Australia. Males moved at night, typically in a z..., Collection of wild spiders
This study was conducted on Eora and Kuring-gai (also Guringai) Nations’ lands. Individual male Atrax robustus specimens (n = 19) were collected between February and April of 2020 (n = 2), 2021 (n = 8), and 2022 (n = 9), from Lane Cove National Park (-33.761, 151.106), Sydney, Australia. To collect males, trips on foot after 8pm AEST were made along multiple fire trails within the national park. Males were spotted on and alongside the fire trail in undergrowth and upon elevated roadside banks. Collecting individuals involved placing an open 500ml plastic container over the top of the spider, then encouraging the spider to walk into the container using the lid. Once collected, we labelled the location using flagging tape and saved the GPS location of each individual using a Garmin GPSMAP 62sc.
Transmitter attachment
We used model T15 micro-radio transmitters (Advanced Telemetry Systems, Gold Coast, Qld., Australia) to tag spiders (Figure 1). The T15 transmitte..., , # Weathering the storm for love? The mate searching behaviour of wild males of (the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atracidae: Atrax robustus)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mw6m90656](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mw6m90656)

Authors: Caitlin N. Creak, Hugo Muirhead, Michael Kasumovic, Russell Bonduriansky, Bruno A. Buzatto

Summary of Project:

We investigated how mate-searching males move through their habitat and how their movement is affected by weather conditions in the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus). Nineteen male spiders were fitted with micro-radio transmitters and tracked one at a time every day during their mating seasons in Sydney, Australia. We then compared their movement with temperature and rainfall data collected from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

## List of files

**weathering_the_storm1.qmd**\
**Displacement.csv**\
**allspiders1.csv**

### File descriptions:

**weathering_the_storm1.qmd** - The only file needed to see all analyses in manuscript. Loads i...