Estímulos sexuais durante o comportamento reprodutivo e o tamanho de Pholcus sp. (Araneae: Pholcidae) influenciando seu valor adaptativo.

Abstract

The courtship in spiders is comprised of various male-female behaviors that act as a intraspecific communication indicating the identity, reproductive state, and the quality of the co-specifics. The following study analyzes the influence of these sexual stimuli on the time of copulation and birth of the spiderlings, as: the vibrations of the abdomen and the insertion of male pedipalps, as well as the size of the parents acting on these variables in Pholcus sp. (Pholcidae). Spiders were collected in a residential environment in the city of Uberlândia-MG and taken to the Laboratory of Natural and Reproductive History of Arthropods (LHINRA), at the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU), where the experiments were conduced. After reaching sexual maturity, the couples were randomly separated and placed in an arena, so that it took 50 minutes for the couple to begin copulation. The results revealed that the behavior of courtship and copulation can be divided into four stages: courtship, precopulation, copulation and postcopulation. No correlation was found between the number of pedipalps insertions and copulation time, different from abdome vibrations where it was verified that the number of these vibrations is associated with a longer copulation time. The same absence of correlation was also found for the size of the male and female in relation to the number of spiderlings. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding sexual stimuli in the behavior of courtship and copulation of spiders, mainly the acceptance of the male by the female, besides its influence on copulation time.