An Electrifying Conversation:
Multimodal Courtship in Nursery Web Spiders
Animal communication is rarely limited to a single sensory channel. This project investigates the complex multimodal courtship of the nursery web spider, Pisaura mirabilis, where chemical and vibratory signals are well-documented. Upon contacting a female’s dragline silk, males perform vibratory displays (tremulations), a behavior known to be elicited by the female pheromone.
This project pushes the frontier of sensory biology by testing a novel hypothesis: that male tremulations also generate a detectable electrostatic field, adding a third, previously unknown modality to this sexual communication system. While electroreception has been demonstrated in contexts like predation and dispersal, its role in sexual communication remains unexplored.
Our research integrates two approaches: first, we are using non-targeted metabolomics to identify the specific female pheromone that initiates this entire courtship sequence. Second, we are employing biophysical techniques to test whether males generate, and females detect, electrostatic signals during vibratory displays.
We invite motivated students (BSc, MSc) to join this frontier project and explore a new dimension of animal communication.
Animal Metabolomics & Ecology 