title: Bourgeois behavior and freeloading in the colonial orb web spider Parawixia bistriata (Araneae, Araneidae).
abstract: Spiders of the tropical American colonial orb weaver Parawixia bistriata form a communal bivouac in daytime. At sunset, they leave the bivouac and construct individual, defended webs within a large, communally built scaffolding of permanent, thick silk lines between trees and bushes. Once spiders started building a web, they repelled other spiders walking on nearby scaffolding with a "bounce" behavior. In nearly all cases (93%), this resulted in the intruder leaving without a fight, akin to the "bourgeois strategy," in which residents win and intruders retreat without escalated contests. However, a few spiders (6.5%) did not build a web due to lack of available space. Webless spiders were less likely to leave when bounced (only 42% left) and instead attempted to "freeload," awaiting the capture of prey items in nearby webs. Our simple model shows that webless spiders should change their strategy from bourgeois to freeloading satellite as potential web sites become increasingly occupied.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution, Zoological Institute, University of Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wenseleers
authors.forename: Jonathan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Bacon
authors.forename: Denise A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Alves
authors.forename: Margaret J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Couvillon
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kärcher
authors.forename: Fabio S
authors.initials: FS
authors.lastname: Nascimento
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nogueira-Neto
authors.forename: Marcia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ribeiro
authors.forename: Elva J H
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tofilski
authors.forename: Francis L W
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Ratnieks
mesh_terms: D000378:Agonistic Behavior; D000818:Animals; D001938:Brazil; D017753:Ecosystem; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D013112:Spiders / Q000502:physiology*; D013731:Territoriality