Hunger State and not Personality Determines Task Participation in a Spider Society

This data set was collected by behavioural observations on the Indian social spider Stegodyphus sarasinorum, maintained in the laboratory. The data set consists of identities of spiders attacking prey when individual spiders were fed and starved. The data also consists of two control experiments: (i) Data where spiders were allowed to feed after each trial and (ii) Data where spiders were not allowed to feed after each trial. The data also consists of boldness scores of spiders. Analyses of this data set revealed that individual hunger state of spiders influenced their propensities to attack prey. We find no evidence for personality-mediated task specialization.