Female And Male Crab Spiders Work Together To Camouflage As Flowers
Language
Reading Level
Listen to Article
Alignment
Environmental scientists Shi-Mao Wu and Jiang-Yun Gao were in a rainforest in China's Yuan Province when they noticed mosquitos buzzing around some flowers. Upon looking closer, the researchers realized they were looking at a male and a female crab spider. They had come together to resemble a single flower. The male spider was disguised as the pistils and stamens, while the female looked like the flower's lighter petals.
"When I first observed the male spider, I did not observe the female spider," says Wu. "They successfully deceived my eyes."
Wu and Gao say it is common for female crab spiders to camouflage themselves to blend in with their floral environment. Some even change colors to match the flower on which they are sitting. The clever disguise protects them against predators and makes it easy to catch unsuspecting prey. But this behavior has rarely been observed in male crab spiders, which are smaller and darker in color than the females.
More importantly, this is the first evidence of cooperation mimicry in any species. This adaptation requires both participants to come together to create a convincing camouflage, which is difficult to achieve. Wu and Gao revealed their findings on March 1, 2024.
"This could be an example of "cooperation" that expands the niche of both females and males in mimicry systems. Cooperating individuals may have improved survivorship and predation efficiency," the researchers said.
Resources: newscientist.com, phys.org, ZMEscience.com
Get the Workbook for this article!
Workbook contains: Article, Reading Comprehension, Critical Thinking Questions, Vocabulary in Context (+ answers), Multiple Choice Quiz (+ answers), Parts of Speech Quiz (+ answers), Vocabulary Game (+ answers)Cite Article
Learn Keywords in this Article
16 Comments
ridireemerald7 monthsI don't know why I decided to read this artical XD I have arachniphobia and it was mean to do to me XD. It's cool how they do that and even cooler that they're on the other end of the planet from me ;P
troublemaker877 monthsCool I love how they use camouflage together
adric7 monthsawesome sauce
brooklyn20127 monthsit is very intresting
orcaswiminspace7 monthsthats cool, i've never heard of camo in spiders, or at least spiders that could change their colors.
turtlelover10257 monthsthis is really scary how fast animals are evolving like how not long ago there was an article on monkeys using war tactics we are going to have some competition in the coming 1000 years
deathbringer17 monthsits like a brother-sister team working together
indigurl1237 monthsThe spiders are so big! I wonder if they are the original spidermen.- indigurl1237 monthsThis is pretty cool if you ask me. #flowerpower
sparkle_23457 monthsThat's kinda scary
