Biology:Decoy-building spider

Short description: Spiders that build decoys in their webs

Decoy-building spiders are relatively small spiders that create an object in their webs that resembles a much bigger spider. The building material for the false spider is debris, carcasses of food and even their own shed old skin. The first such spider, originally found in the area of Tambopata river in Peru, is thought to belong to the genus Cyclosa. Later another species was found in a different region of the World, on Negros Island in Philippines . This spider makes a decoy object with "legs" spread from the body in all directions, while the Peruvian decoy has "legs" pointing towards the ground.

Apparently, these two species, separated by more than 11,000 miles, evolved independently, indicating that making large sculptures of arachnids serves some role in luring prey for spiders or as a defence against predators. It was earlier shown that spider Cyclosa mulmeinensis, living in Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan makes life-size decoy copies of himself that are taken by predators instead.

See also

Orb-weaving spider

Further reading

• Tseng, Ling; Min Tso, I. (August 2009). "A risky defence by a spider using conspicuous decoys resembling itself in appearance" (in en). Animal Behaviour 78 (2): 425–431. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.05.017. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347209002310. Retrieved 24 July 2021.