Nelson believes this spider evolved its ant-like ways over a long period of evolution "in which each morph that resembled ants more was selected for and morphs that did not resemble ants were selected against." The deception works better if the fake behaves like an ant too, so natural selection appears to have also selected for spiders within this species that act like ants. The end result is a spider that is the spitting image of an ant. Paula Cushing, president of the American Arachnological Society and curator of invertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, told Discovery News that insects and spiders that mimic ants "are well protected from their own potential predators," since "ants are often unpalatable prey for arthropod predators or are not attractive as prey due to their aggressive behavior towards intruders and their ability to sting and bite animals that attack them." "Nelson and Jackson's experimental studies have gone a long way towards supporting the hypothesis that myrmecomorphy (resembling an ant) is evolutionarily adaptive in that it protects the myrmecomorph against predation," Cushing added. Related Links: |
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