ArticleScientific reports2015
Exploiting a moment of weakness: male spiders escape sexual cannibalism by copulating with moulting females.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Alternative mating tactics in brown widow spiders: mating with or without male self-sacrifice does not affect the copulatory mechanism.Frontiers in zoology · 2025Article
- Olfaction with legs-Spiders use wall-pore sensilla for pheromone detection.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Does female control and male mating system predict courtship investment and mating outcomes? A comparative study in five widow spider species (genus Latrodectus) tested under similar laboratory conditions.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Females adopt sexual catalepsy to facilitate mating.Current zoology · 2024Article
- Strategic pheromone signalling by mate searching females of the sexually cannibalistic spiderRoyal Society open science · 2022Article
- Mating behaviour and behavioural ecology of a Predatory Wasp,Saudi journal of biological sciences · 2021Article
- Chromosome-level reference genome of the European wasp spider Argiope bruennichi: a resource for studies on range expansion and evolutionary adaptation.GigaScience · 2021Article
- Male coercion and female injury in a sexually cannibalistic mantis.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Sperm competition when transfer is dangerous.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Sex differences in spiders: from phenotype to genomics.Development genes and evolution · 2020Review
- Immature mating as a tactic of polygynous male western widow spiders.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2020Article
- Effects of social information on life history and mating tactics of males in the orb-web spiderEcology and evolution · 2018Article
- Mate availability does not influence mating strategies in males of the sexually cannibalistic spiderPeerJ · 2018Article
- Copulation with immature females increases male fitness in cannibalistic widow spiders.Biology letters · 2016Article
- The shield effect: nuptial gifts protect males against pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism.Biology letters · 2016Article
- Old maids have more appeal: effects of age and pheromone source on mate attraction in an orb-web spider.PeerJ · 2016Article
- Risky business: males choose more receptive adults over safer subadults in a cannibalistic spider.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sexual cannibalism is a particularly extreme example of conflict between the sexes, depriving the male of future reproduction. Theory predicts that sexual conflict should induce counter-adaptations in the victim. Observations of male spiders mating with moulting and hence largely immobile females suggest that this behaviour functions to circumvent female control and cannibalism. However, we lack quantitative estimates of natural frequencies and fitness consequences of these unconventional matings. To understand the importance of mating while moulting in cannibalistic mating systems, we combined mating experiments and paternity assessment in the laboratory with extensive field observations using the sexually cannibalistic orb-web spider Argiope bruennichi. Copulations with moulting females resulted in 97% male survival compared with only 20% in conventional matings. Mating while moulting provided similar paternity benefits compared with conventional matings. Our findings support the hypothesis that mating with moulting females evolved under sexual conflict and safely evades sexual cannibalism. Despite male benefits, natural frequencies were estimated around 44% and directly predicted by a male guarding a subadult female. Since only adult females signal their presence, the difficulty for males to locate subadult females might limit further spreading of mating with moulting females.
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