Maria J Albo

Faculty of Sciences UdelaR//Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute

Environmental conditions together with agents of sexual selection (i.e., mate competition) regulate the expression of mating tactics. Likewise, alternative tactics arise when resources needed for reproduction are limited. These tactics are commonly performed by less competitive males (e.g. small size) and restricted to low frequencies in the popula...

Factors that increase reproductive variance among individuals act to reduce effective population size (Ne), which accelerates the loss of genetic diversity and decreases the efficacy of purifying selection. These factors include sexual cannibalism, offspring investment and mating system. Pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism, where the female consumes...

Background Deceptive alternative mating tactics are commonly maintained at low frequencies within populations because males using them are less competitive and acquire lower fitness than those using dominant tactics. However, the successful invasion of a male deceptive tactic is plausible if deception carries no fitness cost to females. Among popul...

Evolutionary loss of sexual traits may occur if the forces that maintain those traits weaken or disappear. Females may evolve resistance or a change in preference if the male sexual trait decreases their fitness (e.g., coercive or deceptive traits). In nuptial gift-giving spiders, males offer a food gift wrapped in silk during courtship, taking adv...

In the spider Paratrechalea ornata, males have two gift-giving mating tactics, offering either a nutritive (prey) or a worthless (prey leftovers) silk wrapped gift to females. Both gift types confer similar mating success and duration and afford males a higher success rate than when they offer no gift. If this lack of difference in the reproductive...

Females of nuptial gift-giving species are known to mate with several males, so that they secure multiple ejaculates and food via nuptial gifts. However, gifts may decrease females’ reproductive success, for instance, if they received non-nutritive gifts (worthless). The gift-giving mating system of the spider Paratrechalea ornata creates a scenari...

Background When males are selective, they can either reject low-quality females or adjust their reproductive investment in response to traits that indicate female quality (e.g., body size or condition). According to the differential allocation hypothesis , males increase their reproductive investment when paired with high-quality females ( positive...

In the venom of spiders, linear peptides (LPs), also called cytolytical or antimicrobial peptides, represent a largely neglected group of mostly membrane active substances that contribute in some spider species considerably to the killing power of spider venom. By next-generation sequencing venom gland transcriptome analysis, we investigated 48 spi...

Male sensory exploitation of female gustatory pre-existing bias has been proposed for the origin of nuptial gifts in insects and spiders. This sexual trait may have been beneficial to both sexes, giving mating and survival advantages to males and providing nutritional resources for females. However, the evolution of deceptive worthless gifts is aga...

The spider family Trechaleidae includes 17 genera and 131 species distributed throughout the Neotropical region. Most of them are semiaquatic spiders living adjacent to streams and rivers. Very few species of the family have been studied for their natural history or behavior; however four genera (ParatrechaleaCarico, 2005, Trechalea Thorell, 1869,...

1. Carnivores are often food and/or macronutrient limited in their natural habitats, but whether they are limited mostly by protein or lipid is still a matter of controversy. As many predators and carnivorous scavengers also include plant material in their diet (omnivory), carbohydrate limitation is also possible. 2. The authors used a recently des...

In the spider families Trechaleidae and Pisauridae, males offer nuptial gifts to females during courtship. Nutritive gifts contain recently caught prey wrapped in silk, while worthless gifts contain prey leftovers or plant parts. The presence of wrapped gifts is known in three out of 16 genera (Paratrechalea Carico, 2005, Trechalea Thorell, 1869 an...

In the gift-giving spider Paratrechalea ornata, females mate multiple times and apparently may bias the paternity according to the nuptial gift content (nutritive or worthless). Paternity studies using microsatellite markers would, therefore, be ideal for studying male fertilization success for female offspring. We genotyped four microsatellites pr...

Fear of animals is an important issue to consider in order to increase knowledge about nature and foster positive attitudes for nature conservation. Spiders are a challenging group, because they are widely feared and disliked by humans, although the majority of species are harmless and they play a positive role in natural ecosystems. By means of se...

In some spiders, nuptial gifts consist of prey or inedible items wrapped in silk by males and offered to females during courtship. Such gifts occur in the Neotropical family Trechaleidae, of which most species are semi-aquatic, associated with watercourses in riparian habitats. Here, we describe the sexual behaviour of the South American species Tr...

Alternative mating tactics are expected to occur predominantly when mate competition is intense, resources are in short supply, or as a result of asymmetric power relationships between individuals. Males of the nuptial gift-giving spider Pisaura mirabilis use a prevailing tactic of offering a nutritive gift (insect prey) and a deceptive tactic of o...

Spiders have long been noted as classic examples of sexual behavior among arachnids, including extreme sexual dimorphism in some groups, and behavioral adaptations to diverse mating patterns. In recent decades, studies on the biology of Neotropical spiders have offered novel information on processes related to reproductive biology, including sexual...

Sexes' roles in post-copulatory processes have important effects on individual fitness and are promising to study in species showing complex mating behaviours. In the spider Schizocosa malitiosa, males perform two different copulatory patterns, pattern 1 includes 80% of total pedipalp insertions and pattern 2 includes 20%. Both patterns produce sim...

Male exploitation of female sensory or motivational biases has been proposed to account for the early evolution of nuptial gift-giving behaviour. The hypothesis is supported if females of a species positioned early in a clade respond positively to sexual signals from males of more recent species in the clade, and if these signals are not included i...

Background Polyandry is commonly maintained by direct benefits in gift-giving species, so females may remate as an adaptive foraging strategy. However, the assumption of a direct benefit fades in mating systems where male gift-giving behaviour has evolved from offering nutritive to worthless (non-nutritive) items. In the spider Paratrechalea ornata...

Pisauridae, Trechaleidae, and Lycosidae constitute part of the Lycosoidea clade that includes a diverse range of wandering spider species that inhabit terrestrial and semi-aquatic environments. Phylogenetic studies of these three families based on morphological and behavioural traits have produced contradictory results on their evolutionary relatio...

Several not mutually exclusive functions have been ascribed to nuptial gifts across different taxa. Although the idea that a nuptial prey gift may protect the male from pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism is attractive, it has previously been considered of no importance based on indirect evidence and rejected by experimental tests. We reinvestigated...

In nuptial gift-giving species females sometimes select their potential mates based on the presence and size of the gift. But in some species, such as the Neotropical polyandrous spider Paratrechalea ornate male gifts vary in quality, from nutritive to worthless, and this male strategy can be in conflict with female nutritional benefits. In this sp...

In species where females gain a nutritious nuptial gift during mating the balance between benefits and costs of mating may depend on access to food. This means that there is not one optimal number of matings for the female but a range of optimal mating numbers. With increasing food availability the optimal number of matings for a female should vary...

RESUMEN Los mantíspidos (Mantispinae) son insectos cuyas larvas depredan huevos de arañas. Se examinó la asociación de éstos a tres especies de la familia Trechaleidae. Encontramos Dicromantispa gracilis con Paratrechalea ornata y Trechaleoides keyserlingi; Paramantispa ambusta con Trechaleoides biocellata. Este es el primer reporte de Mantispinae...

Nuptial gifts are an intriguing male sexually selected trait that has evolved in a wide range of forms among different animals. Wrapped prey gifts have been intensively studied in two spiders: Paratrechalea ornata (Trechaleidae), a neotropical species, and Pisaura mirabilis (Pisauridae), a Palearctic species. Interestingly, these species experience...

Males from gift-giving species attempt to obtain food to offer to females. Therefore, food access may affect both their body condition and their reproductive success. In some species, males reduce the costs associated with giving gifts by reusing gifts, or by offering inedible items. Males from the spider Paratrechalea ornata (Trechaleidae) offer f...

An extensive diversity of nuptial gifts is known in invertebrates, but prey wrapped in silk is a unique type of gift present in few insects and spiders. Females from spider species prefer males offering a gift accepting more and longer matings than when males offered no gift. Silk wrapping of the gift is not essential to obtain a mating, but appear...

Males of the nursery web spider Pisaura mirabilis usually offer an insect prey wrapped in white silk as a nuptial gift to facilitate copulation. Males exploit female foraging preferences in a sexual context as females feed on the gift during copula-tion. It is possible for males to copulate without a gift, however strong female preference for the g...

Polyandrous females are expected to discriminate among males through postcopulatory cryptic mate choice. Yet, there is surprisingly little unequivocal evidence for female-mediated cryptic sperm choice. In species in which nuptial gifts facilitate mating, females may gain indirect benefits through preferential storage of sperm from gift-giving males...

In many species the function and evolution of nuptial gifts have been explained by the male mating effort hypothesis; i.e., males increase their fertilization success by donating gifts to females. The gift size may determine copulation duration and consequently affects male fertilization rate. In the well-known spider Pisaura mirabilis, previous st...

The relative force of direct and indirect selection underlying the evolution of polyandry is contentious. When females acquire direct benefits during mating, indirect benefits are often considered negligible. Although direct benefits are likely to play a prominent role in the evolution of polyandry, post-mating selection for indirect benefits may s...

In many species, condition-dependent secondary sexual traits are important for female choice. In the spider Pisaura mirabilis, males offer females a nuptial gift (prey wrapped in silk) during courtship. Gift construction may involve high costs for males, and those in low condition invest less time and silk in wrapping the prey. We investigated how...

For many spiders, sex pheromones associated with female silk are important stimuli that elicit male searching and courtship behaviors. In that context, female sexual receptivity and chemical attractiveness can depend on age and reproductive status. In Paratrechalea ornata (Mello-Leitão 1943) (Araneae: Trechaleidae), males offer females a nuptial gi...

In nuptial gift-giving species, benefits of acquiring a mate may select for male deception by donation of worthless gifts. We investigated the effect of worthless gifts on mating success in the spider Pisaura mirabilis. Males usually offer an insect prey wrapped in silk; however, worthless gifts containing inedible items are reported. We tested mal...

Pisaura mirabilis males offer a prey wrapped in silk as a nuptial gift that functions as a male mating effort. If nuptial gift construction is costly, males in poor feeding condition would invest less in this behaviour than males in good condition. We investigated frequencies and characteristics of gift construction in males under different sexual...

Preliminary genetic studies in Trechaleidae spider family show high variation in sex chromosomes and high heterocigocity, suggesting high chromatin plasticity. The trechaleids Paratrechalea ornata, Trechalea bucculenta and Trechaleoides biocellata are present in Uruguay. Males offering nuptial gifts during courtship have been reported in P. ornata...

Most sexual preference studies test female choice between different males or test male choice between females with different reproductive status, but few studies test male preference towards females of different ages within the same reproductive status. In subsocial spiders, males can share the nest with subadult and adult females of different ages...

The occurrence of nuptial gifts is rare in spiders, being well known only for a single species, Pisaura mirabilis (Pisauridae), whose males offer females a prey wrapped in silk during courtship. Although some males can mate without offering a prey, the gift in this species is thought to represent male mating effort. Male gift offering has been rece...

By wrapping prey and offering it as a nuptial gift, males can obtain mating and/or parental benefits despite some costs. Males of the Neotropical semiaquatic spider Paratrechalea ornata (Trechaleidae) offer females a nuptial gift consisting of a prey item wrapped in silk. What stimulus inhibits males from feeding and elicits gift construction? We h...

In spider species with first male sperm priority, males guard subadult females as a tactic for improving their paternity. Preliminary observations in Anelosimus cf. studiosus, a subsocial species from Uruguay, showed that males court and guard subadult females. To elucidate the sexual tactics of this species, we placed two adult males with one adul...