Join us in shaping the future of ornithological collections and research! We're looking for a Curator of Ornithology in Hamburg to help advance collection-based biodiversity science, research infrastructure, and long-term knowledge on birds worldwide 🐦🌍
We are hiring a curator for the ornithology section at the @leibnizlib.bsky.social in Hamburg. Please apply or share: www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/careers/j...
Nice! This expands the list of spiders for which we know that vision is used in hunting, like the charismatic jumping spiders e.g. below 👀 Though crab spiders likely don't use it for complicated visual predatory tasks, it's still very useful behavioural info! But here's where it gets weird...(3/8)
Out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org - we show that crab spiders (the ones you usually see ambushing pollinators on flowers 🕷️🌸) get worse at hunting if their eyes are covered!🫣 Sounds obvious? It's actually quite surprising, here's why... 👀 (1/8)
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
Typically, spiders that hunt with vision, like jumping spiders, have large eyes, that also vary a lot in size between different eyes of the same animal - probably adapted to different tasks. BUT! When we measure with microCT, the crab spiders don't! Their eyes are small and similar in size! (4/8)
So, we conducted a simple behavioural experiment; placing crab spiders in arenas with flies and seeing how successful the spiders were at catching their prey - we used spiders with normal vision, and others we had painted over the eyes - they got worse at hunting when they couldn't see 🕷️🪰 (2/8)
Even more! When we look at the brains of the spiders, we find that they also haven't invested very much in the parts that process visual information 🧠👀 (Yes, spider central nervous systems look a bit like rubber ducks lol 🦆)... (5/8)
Great collaboration with @samjakeengland.bsky.social ♥️
Spiders wriggling their butt - What more could you ask for???
It was so lovely working on this with wonderful co-authors @lucillejmrose.bsky.social (her first paper! 🥳), @vanspidergirl.bsky.social 🧠, @mherberstein.bsky.social 🕷️, and @laurensr.bsky.social 👁️ @multipleye-lab.bsky.social @mfnberlin.bsky.social (7/8)