ter Haar, Stefan (2020) Sexual cannibalism in spiders: mating and foraging strategy. Bachelor's Thesis, Biology.
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Abstract
Sexual cannibalism commonly occurs in spiders before, during or after copulation and may function as part of female mating strategy through mate choice, which may be implemented via mate rejection pre-copulatory or control of male paternity post-copulatory. Yet pre-copulatory cannibalism occurs infrequently so mate rejection may be a relatively unimportant part of female mate choice. Post-copulatory cannibalism may function to control copulation duration or to retain the ability to re-mate by preventing mate plugs, female genital mutilation and mate guarding, but evidence that supports this is scarce. Sexual cannibalism may also function as a foraging strategy to gain food of high quality and increase female reproductive output. Yet most males are relatively small compared to females and mostly consist of proteins, whereas eggs mostly consist of lipids. Despite this, male consumption results in increased female fecundity in various ways in most, but not all, spider species. Cannibalistic females increased energy investment in eggs, possibly from their somatic reserves. Proteins may be required to allocate energy from female somatic reserves to their eggs. Therefore consumption of males may result in enhanced fecundity of females. Sexual cannibalism may function both as mate choice and to gain a high quality meal in spider species. Hence, sexual cannibalism could have multiple functions in a spider, but it’s functions may vary in prevalence between spider species.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis) |
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| Supervisor name: | Dietz, M.W. |
| Degree programme: | Biology |
| Thesis type: | Bachelor's Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Apr 2020 10:40 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2020 10:40 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/21711 |
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