20th International Congress of Arachnology

across stand ages. Consequently, current forest manage-

ment practices designed to enhance KW, by simplifying the

landscape, may negatively affect other important ecosys-

tem structures and functions.

Keywords: fire, ecological restoration, ground spider,

community ecology

Student - oral presentation

Three dimensional analysis of the spider loco-

motory system—first answers and solutions

*Jens Runge, Christian S. Wirkner

Universitaet Rostock, Allgemeine & Spezielle Zoologie,

Institut fuer Biowissenschaften, Universitaetsplatz 2,

18055 Rostock, Germany

jens.runge@uni-rostock.de

Although an impressive body of knowledge exists, detailed

comparative studies of structural and spatial aspects of

the complex locomotory apparatus in Arachnida have pro-

duced contradictory results. In the course of a comparative

survey recently started on this topic, we therefore studied

three representative species of spiders (

Liphisitus malaya-

nus, Cupiennius salei, Araneus diadematus

). One major

aim of this study was to establish visualization methods

and terminology to be easily and consistently applied to

all arachnid taxa. Spiders comprise over 45,000 species

and, in some features, show a fascinating disparity. Other

features, such as the locomotory system, however, seem

to be highly conserved. Generally, the locomotory system

in spiders consists of the prosoma and its four pairs of

walking legs, each comprising seven cuticular podomeres.

The locomotory musculature can be subdivided into the

extrinsic musculature situated in the prosoma and the

intrinsic musculature located inside the walking legs.

Here we present the first three-dimensional analysis of the

locomotory system in spiders. Cuticular structures, muscles

and tendons are visualized and described using state of the

art morphological methods. To unify the nomenclature of

the investigated structures, results are compared to pub-

lished data and a position-based nomenclature of muscles

is established which does not refer to homology in order to

avoid a priori misconceptions. On the basis of these com-

parisons, homology hypotheses are formulated in order to

synthesize all current morphological knowledge. This in

combination with interactive 3D representations confer

our results a high degree of reproducibility.

Oral presentation

Experience with contaminated soil affects

learning in a wolf spider

Ann L. Rypstra

, Giséle Aubin

, Mary Gardiner

, James D.

Harwood

Department of Biology, Miami University, Hamilton,

OH 45011, USA;

College of Food, Agricultural, and

Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University,

Wooster, OH 44691, USA;

Department of Entomology,

University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546, USA

rypstral@miamioh.edu

The long industrial history of many urban communities

ensures that heavy metals are pervasive contaminants in

their soils. It is clear that childhood exposure to common

metals, such as lead, can have profound effects on the

intellectual development of humans but few studies have

explored the impacts on invertebrates that spend their

lives in close association with these contaminated soils. In

initial experiments, we documented the ability of the wolf

spider,

Pardosa milvina

(Araneae, Lycosidae) to learn

to associate the odor of peppermint with food. Trained

animals changed their activity when near peppermint and

were more likely to move toward the peppermint odor in

a two choice olfactometer. We repeated these experiments

with animals that had spent one month on soil laden with

heavy metals that was obtained from urban neighbor-

hoods in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. While spiders living on

the contaminated soil behaved differently from animals

reared on uncontaminated soil, they did not learn to prefer

the peppermint odor. We uncovered no evidence that our

training protocols caused them to alter their activity in the

presence of peppermint and they selected lanes at random

in the two–choice olfactometer. These results suggest that

P. milvina

has some level of cognition and that their

cognitive ability is affected by exposure to heavy metals.

Thus, this spider may be an interesting model organism for

the exploration of the neuropsychological impact of this

kind of pollution. In addition, if learning is critical to the

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DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE

REPORTS

No. 3, July 2, 2016

Cushing