Feeding mediated web-building plasticity in a cobweb spider

Behavioral plasticity has been proposed as a means by which animals alter their phenotypes in response to changing conditions. Animals may display behavioral plasticity as a consequence of environmental variation. The detritus-based, bell-shaped cobweb spider Campanicola campanulata is an ideal model to study behavioral plasticity, because its web architecture is easy to be quantified, and the functions of different parts of the web are clear. Though the plasticity of cobweb architecture has been reported in a few species, retreats as important defensive structures have rarely been considered before because retreats in most cobwebs are relatively small compared with the web size. We studied the web-building behaviors of C. campanulata under different feeding regimes. We set up 3 spider treatments with different feeding conditions: marginally well fed, moderately well fed, and extremely well fed, and observed the differences in the web architecture among them. In addition, we measured th..., Study species
Campanicola campanulata (Araneae: Theridiidae) is widely distributed in South China, such as Hubei, Zhejiang, and Guizhou provinces (Chen 1993). It builds a web in cool but rain-proofed places such as concaves of rocks or earth walls, or under low overhanging branches (Figure 1A). It feeds mainly on ants, and usually lives in aggregation, building webs solitarily, with 1 spider per retreat (Figure 1B, C). The web consists of anchor silk, a bell-shaped retreat, and dozens of sticky gumfooted lines (Figure 1D). Anchor silks are usually made of strands of silk suspended from concave walls or tree roots. These structures prevent damage to the web by winds. The retreat is made of silk, sand, pebbles, debris, leaves, or shells, and has a small opening at the bottom. Its weight is usually 30–40 times the body weight of the spider. The gumfooted lines of the web emanate from the retreat edge and are fastened to coarse sand grains or fixed substrata, which are mainly used to form a..., , # Feeding mediated web-building plasticity in a cobweb spider

This Zhang_et_al_CZ_Readme.txt was generated on 2022-06-22 by Haixin Zhang and Jie Liu.

\--------------------General Information-------------------
\#This is the dataset for
Zhang, H.X., Li,G., L, C.C., Chen, J.,Zhao,Z.Y.,Zhang,S.C & Liu, J. 2022. Feeding mediated web-building plasticity in a cobweb spider.
\#Principle Investigator Contact Information
Shichang,Zhang,State Key Laboratory of Biocatalysis and Enzyme Engineering & Centre for Behavioural Ecology & Evolution, School of Life Sciences.
Jie Liu, State Key Laboratory of Biocatalysis and Enzyme Engineering & Centre for Behavioural Ecology & Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, China;
Hubeiate Key Laboratory of Regional Development and Environmental Response, Faculty of Resources and Environmental Science, Hubei University, Wuhan, China;
e-mail: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]) (S.Z) and [[e-mail]](mai...