Mate choice as a third context in which a mosquito-specialist jumping spider attends to red-coloured cues

For animals living in a noisy world, the volume of potentially relevant information exceeds attentional capacity, but relying on the same cue in multiple contexts might be a solution to this problem. This solution has been suggested by findings from research on Evarcha culicivora, a mosquito-specialist jumping spider in which both sexes rely on red-coloured cues in the context of identifying blood-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes as preferred prey. In a second context, males also attend to the red-coloured faces of other males that are displayed in male-male interactions. Here, as a third context, we present evidence that the presence of a male’s red face is also used as a mate-choice cue for females. In a Y-shaped arena, we gave females the choice between two size-matched stationary male specimens enclosed in glass vials. With colour as the only variable, significantly fewer females chose (i.e., approached and tapped) the vials that housed males with their red facial coloration concealed ..., , # Data from: Mate choice as a third context in which a mosquito-specialist jumping spider attends to red-coloured cues

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.9kd51c5vx](10.5061/dryad.9kd51c5vx)

## GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Mate choice as a third context in which a mosquito-specialist jumping spider attends to red-coloured cues
2. Author contact information

A. Name: Lisa A Taylor
Institution: University of Florida
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]), [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

B. Name: Fiona Cross
Institution: University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

C. Name: Robert R Jackson
Institution: University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

## DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

This dataset contains a single Excel file only, entitled “Evarcha_red_face_mate_choice_DRYAD...,