On Monday, the Greek culture ministry announced that the US archaeologists in Greece have revealed an ancient warrior’s skeleton that has been...
A new study has described how roles of female spiders are decided in a colony of spiders. The study has showed that personality of the female spider is a distinguishing factor for deciding whether it is best suitable for the role of either a warrior or nanny. The researchers said the study will provide them a deep insight into how species decide the labor role based on different personalities.
Ants, bees, wasps and termites are among the species that often form societies separated into castes, including soldiers, reproductive queens, and males.
America is a place where the Anelosimus studiosus spider is found. The species is known to live in community webs and dozens of spiders use them as residence. The female spider has qualities of either passive or docile.
After considering this characteristic, the role of the female spiders is determined in society. Aggressive nature of some females earns them the role of a soldier. However, the researchers said that it is important to have right mix of both types of females as it makes the web more successful.
Docile females are not the ones that attack preys, but they often team up with aggressive spiders during hunting and that is how everyone gets to eat, said Colin Wright, lead study author and a behavioral ecologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
Mixed colonies perform better than colonies having 100% docile or 100% aggressive colonies. The researchers conducted the study to figure out how 141 aggressive and 148 docile female spiders performed on certain tasks.
