A spider in motion: facets of sensory guidance
- PDF / 1,960,387 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 16 Downloads / 163 Views
REVIEW
A spider in motion: facets of sensory guidance Friedrich G. Barth1 Received: 25 August 2020 / Revised: 28 September 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Spiders show a broad range of motions in addition to walking and running with their eight coordinated legs taking them towards their resources and away from danger. The usefulness of all these motions depends on the ability to control and adjust them to changing environmental conditions. A remarkable wealth of sensory receptors guarantees the necessary guidance. Many facets of such guidance have emerged from neuroethological research on the wandering spider Cupiennius salei and its allies, although sensori-motor control was not the main focus of this work. The present review may serve as a springboard for future studies aiming towards a more complete understanding of the spider’s control of its different types of motion. Among the topics shortly addressed are the involvement of lyriform slit sensilla in path integration, muscle reflexes in the walking legs, the monitoring of joint movement, the neuromuscular control of body raising, the generation of vibratory courtship signals, the sensory guidance of the jump to flying prey and the triggering of spiderling dispersal behavior. Finally, the interaction of sensors on different legs in oriented turning behavior and that of the sensory systems for substrate vibration and medium flow are addressed. Keywords Spider motion · Sensory control · Mechanoreception · Sensory ecology · Neuroethology
Introduction Neuroethology aims at an understanding of the neural and sensory mechanisms underlying behavior, which most obviously manifests itself as motion. Motion, in turn, is primarily thought of as locomotion taking the animal from one place to another, as rhythmic motion like walking, running and flying. However, the motion also implies a large range of other ethologically relevant movements associated with prey capture, courtship, idiothetic orientation, and dispersal behavior, to name just a few examples. A lot still has to be learned regarding the sensory feedback control of motive behavior in spiders and the relevant proximal sensory cues, which allow the necessary ad hoc adaptations to the environment. So far, the study of spider motion has focused on questions of physics and engineering, such as how muscles, the hydraulic leg extension system and the exoskeletons generate and support the forces * Friedrich G. Barth [email protected] 1
Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Althanstr.14, 1090 Vienna, Austria
enabling locomotion. Much less attention has been given to its sensory control. This is also seen when looking at the list of contents of the present Special Issue, which, therefore, provides a welcome platform to draw attention to this deficit. Several lines of our neuroethological research on the Central American wandering spider Cupiennius salei and its close relatives, although often with a dif
Data Loading...
