20th International Congress of Arachnology

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118 DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE REPORTS | No. 3, July 2, 2016
Cushing
and our own fieldwork indicates there is one undescribed
Phonognatha species, and multiple new combinations and
synonymies with taxa previously described as Araneus. Pre-
liminary phylogenetic analyses including the Queensland
endemic P. melanopyga (L. Koch, 1871) are equivocal
with respect to the reciprocal monophyly of the genera.
This could suggest the leaf curl and incomplete orb-web of
Phonognatha were lost secondarily, but all taxa retained
the non-sticky temporary spiral in the final web.
Keywords: Araneidae, Australasia, leaf-curling, system-
atics, taxonomy, Zygiellinae
Oral presentation
Honoring Herbert W. Levi: studies on
Phoroncidia and an interdisciplinary
project based on spider biodiversity in
Grand Teton National Park
Sarah J. Kariko
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University,
26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
In 2014, arachnology lost a major figure in Herbert W.
Levi. Throughout the course of his career, first at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin and then as curator of arachnology at
Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, he described
1,254 species of spiders and authored over 200 scientific
publications. His scholarly and taxonomic contributions
are well known; less obvious yet equally important were
his interests in conservation and stewardship influenced
by his early studies with Aldo Leopold and brought to frui-
tion through his and his wife Lorna’s dedication to local
conservation and education efforts. This presentation
will pay tribute to Herb by highlighting two areas of my
research and how this work was influenced by his men-
torship. Firstly, I will discuss my taxonomic research and
investigation of structural color in Phoroncidia stemming
from Herb’s publication “American Spiders of the Genus
Phoroncidia” in 1964. Secondly, I will describe my study
of spiders of Grand Teton National Park retracing Herb
and Lorna’s historic invertebrate survey from 1950 and the
resulting interdisciplinary project in celebration of Herb
and Lorna and the centennial of the National Park Service.
Keywords: Herbert and Lorna Levi, Phoroncidia, struc-
tural color, biodiversity, Grand Teton National Park
Student - oral presentation
Individual behavioral differences influence
patterns of social interactions and bacte-
rial transmission dynamics
*Carl N. Keiser1, Noa Pinter-Wollman 2, Jeffrey G. Lawrence1,
Jonathan N. Pruitt1,3
1 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pitts-
burgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA; 2BioCircuits Institute,
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla CA 92093, USA;
3 Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology,
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
Despite the importance of host traits for the likelihood of
the transmission of microbes from exposed to susceptible
individuals, inter-individual variation is seldom considered
in studies of wildlife disease. Here, we test the influence of
host behavioral phenotypes on social network structure
and the likelihood of cuticular bacterial transmission
from exposed individuals to susceptible group-mates
using female social spiders ( Stegodyphus dumicola).
Based on the patterns of contact between resting indi-
viduals of known behavioral types, we assessed whether
individuals assorted according to their behavioral traits.
We found that individuals preferentially interacted with
individuals of unlike behavioral phenotypes (i.e., contact
networks are behaviorally disassortative). We next applied a
GFP-transformed cuticular bacterium, Pantoea sp., to indi-
viduals and allowed them to interact with an unexposed
colony-mate for 24h. We found evidence for transmission
of bacteria in 55% of cases. Though, the likelihood of
transmission was influenced jointly by the behavioral
phenotypes of both the exposed and susceptible individuals:
69% of the instances where we detected bacterial transmis-
sion were cases where the exposed individual was bolder
than its susceptible colony-mate. Indirect transmission via
contaminated silk took place in only 15% of cases. Thus,
bodily contact appears key to transmission in this system.
These data represent a fundamental step towards under-
standing how individual traits jointly influence larger-scale