New Scientist
Image: cybershotking
Pretty name, not-so-pretty domestic arrangements. The golden orb-weaving spider Nephila clavipes has the unpleasant habit of weaving rotting insect carcasses into its web.
What possesses it? The gruesome behaviour isn’t unique to Nephila: many spiders add cadavers to their web designs. Some studies suggest the whiff of rotting carrion is designed to lure insects to their doom, whereas others conclude that the corpses ward off predators.
There might be a third motive for Nephila‘s gothic design tastes. Yann Hénaut at the research institute ECOSUR in Chetumal, Mexico, and colleagues found it when they studied webs on the edge of a coffee plantation in southern Mexico. They chose a 200-metre-long fence dotted with Nephila webs and removed both the spiders and their webs from the first 100 metres. Next they erected 16 sticky insect traps at spider-web height at regular intervals along the whole length of the fence. The next day they catalogued their insect haul.
The results firmly vindicated the insect attraction hypothesis. The traps in the web-free stretch had each captured eight insects on average, while those erected among the fetid stench of the webs had caught an average of 23 insects each. Read more on newscientist.com…
