Research Stories

by Margaret Coulombe
photo courtesy Lisa Taylor

Jumping spiders are clever, winsome, colorful, and inquisitive. There are more 5,188 species. They prance, pose, and can leap more than 20 times their own body length. Jumping spiders live on every continent on Earth, except Antarctica, according to the World Spider Catalog.

ASU biologist Lisa Taylor has covered the red face of Habronattus pyrrithrix with black eyeliner (top) to study the effect on female mate choice

Members of this spider family (Salticidae) come from more than 560 genera. Salticidae is largest family of spiders in the world. It's also one of the most fascinating, especially to Lisa Taylor.

Taylor is a doctoral student. She works with ASU biologist Kevin McGraw in the School of Life Sciences. She is one of a handful of devoted spider paparazzi. Armed with a video camera and makeup, she studies jumping spiders with an eye attuned to their intimate and often colorful methods of communication.

The key to the art of spider woo is keen eyesight. As in humans, the two most prominent eyes (of eight) face forward. These eyes provide stereoscopic vision. Spider color vision is thought to be more complex than in humans. They have up to four color receptors that include the ability to perceive ultraviolet wavelengths.

In many jumping spider species, such as those that Taylor studies, the males are brilliantly colored. They have iridescent faces and fringed forelegs, which they wave, drum, flick or flash in lengthy, elaborate courtship dances for their potential dun and heather colored mates.

To understand more about jumping spiders' mating communication, Taylor blurs these courtship messages—with the use of makeup and foundation.

"I'm trying to understand the function of male coloration. So I manipulate different aspects of a male's color and record how this affects female choice," Taylor says.

She doesn't have all the answers yet. But the ASU researcher has several ideas about the function of a male's elaborate colors. A male's "coat of many colors" could announce to his female counterpart that he is a suitor, as opposed to a tasty meal or a predator.

Scientists also have hypothesized that colors are costly to make, so bright colors could indicate a male's "quality," or fitness and health as a mate.

By applying color (or masking a male spider's colors), Taylor hopes to determine what female jumping spiders prefer. She also wants to learn what male spiders invest in with their eyes toward building future spider generations.

Read about Lisa Taylor's research on spiders who mimic other insects in "Spider mimics."