Male black widow spiders (Latrodectus hesperus) prefer their female mates to be healthy and chaste — a rare demonstration of mate selection by males.
Emily MacLeod and Maydianne Andrade at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada, studied whether male black widows are fussy about females. Males overwhelmingly chose to mate with well-fed females who had not previously mated, both in controlled field studies and in the wild.
Male spiders' preference for well-fed virgins could be strong enough to cause females to have evolved traits, such as the production of sex pheromones, that entice males and advertise the female's status, say the authors.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Picky spiders prefer virgins. Nature 506, 269 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/506269a
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/506269a
