20th International Congress of Arachnology

DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE

REPORTS

No. 3, July 2, 2016

International Congress of Arachnology

autotomizes a limb, its boldness will decrease in concert

with a decrease in sprint speed. To test this, the boldness,

latency to attack prey and sprint speed across three differ-

ent substrates will be measured for individual

D. triton

before and after the autotomy of one leg, which will be

standardized across all individuals. Some individuals with

one autotomized leg will subsequently have a second leg

removed, which will serve to test a further hypothesis that

boldness is a syndrome of sprint speed and will continue

to decrease, until a point, as legs are removed. This

experiment could provide significant insight into how an

awareness of physical ability can affect an individual’s

behavior within a varying number of ecological contexts.

Keywords: autotomy, boldness, fishing spider, behavior

Student - oral presentation

Adaptive timing of predatory activity by a

mosquito-specialist predator

*Chan Deng

1,2

, Robert R. Jackson

1,2

1School of Biological Sciences, University of Canter-

bury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand;

2International Centre of Insect Physiology and

Ecology (ICIPE), Thomas Odhiambo Campus, P.O. Box

30, Mbita Point 40305, Kenya

happydengchan@gmail.com

Evarcha culicivora

is a mosquito-specialist salticid

spider from East Africa that feeds indirectly on vertebrate

blood by actively choosing blood-carrying mosquitoes

as preferred prey and by actively choosing

Anopheles

preferred mosquitoes. We consider whether specialization

by this predator is also expressed in the timing of preda-

tory activity. Our data from field sampling and from

systematically observing

E. culicivora

under semi-field

conditions show that predation tends to be concentrated

in the early morning hours, this being when night-feeding

anthropophilic anopheline mosquitoes tend to be resting

while they digest blood meals acquired during the night.

In experiments using living prey and other experiments

using lures made from dead prey,

E. culicivora

was sig-

nificantly more responsive to prey and significantly more

inclined to choose its preferred prey in the morning than

in the afternoon. We also show that response to prey odour

is significantly stronger in the morning than in the after-

noon. Although

E. culicivora

is known to be attracted to

mate, plant and human odour, we found was no significant

diel pattern in response to mate, plant or human odour

and no significant diel pattern in inclination to mate.

These findings suggest that

E. culicivora

has an innate

activity pattern specific to predation, this being a pattern

that should facilitate encounters with its preferred prey.

Keywords: specialization, predation,

Evarcha culicivora

Anopheles gambiae

Student - oral presentation

Population genomics and phylogeography

Sclerobunus robustus

from the south-

western United States

*Shahan Derkarabetian

1, 2

, Mercedes Burns

, James

Starrett

, Marshal Hedin

Department of Biology, San Diego State University,

San Diego, California 92182-4614, USA;

Department

of Biology, University of California Riverside, River-

side, California 92521, USA

sderkarabetian@gmail.com

The integration of ecological niche modeling into phylo-

geographic analyses has allowed for identification and

testing of potential refugia under a hypothesis-based

framework. In this study we focus on a montane-restricted

cryophilic harvestman,

Sclerobunus robustus

, distributed

throughout the heterogeneous Southern Rocky Mountains

and Intermontane Plateau (SRMIP) of southwestern

North America. We identified hypothetical refugia using

ecological niche models (ENMs) across three time periods,

corroborated these refugia with population genetic

methods using RAD-loci data acquired with double-digest

RAD-seq, and conducted population level phylogenetic and

divergence dating analyses. ENMs identify two large tem-

porally persistent regions in the mid-latitude highlands.

Genetic patterns support these two hypothesized refugia

with higher genetic diversity within refugial populations

and evidence for range expansion in populations found

outside of hypothesized refugia. Phylogenetic analyses

identify five to six genetically divergent, geographically