PhD Student @sleeblab.bsky.social | University of Bonn | Behavioural Ecology | Conservation | Photo- & Videography | SciCom | gazing at sleepy spiders 🕷️✨🌿
she/her
Nadja Geiger
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Using a simple behavioural setup (basically, we let the spiders walk on a tiny catwalk) we asked: when does the bobbing appear?
Our first clue:
The spiders mostly bobbed during short pauses, not while walking.
Two other jumping spider species paused too, but didn’t bob. 👀 [2/8]
With support from:
@unibonn.bsky.social
@uni-konstanz.de
@mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
@zukunftskolleg.bsky.social [8/8]
New paper alert!🕷️✨
Tiny spider. Shiny abdomen. Suspiciously wiggly bum.
In our new study, we asked what abdomen bobbing in this jumping spider is really all about:
Cute? Yes. Meaningful? Let’s find out...! [1/8]
@unibonn.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-026-03745-1
… it sure does!
While bobbing almost vanished in darkness 🌑
and dropped around prey 🪰… [4/8]
… when spiders faced a mirror image or a predator model, the bobbing increased! 🕷️✨
And this suggests the movement is not random, but flexible and context-dependent. [5/8]
It was such a pleasure to write this paper with my marvellous co-authors: Chiara Hirschkorn, @roald-arboel.com, @mherberstein.bsky.social & @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social @sleeblab.bsky.social 🥳🕷️✨ [7/8]
#spider #animalbehaviour #animalcommunication
So then, we tested the spiders in different conditions:
☀️ daylight
🌑 darkness
🪰 prey encounter
🪞 mirror / “conspecific”
🕷️ predator model
Basically: does the spider change the bum-wiggle depending on who might see it?…[3/8]
And that’s really cool:
The spider may use abdomen bobbing as a flexible visual signal for different functions; e.g. to communicate with conspecifics, as well as deter predators!
The next big question is: what does the receiver actually do when it sees the bob?
To be continued. 👀 [6/8]
