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Cyclosa Menge, 1866 (Araneidae) Orb-Weavers Build Stabilimenta That Resemble Larger Spiders

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Cyclosa Menge, 1866 (Araneidae) Orb-Weavers Build Stabilimenta That Resemble Larger Spiders
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CC Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 4.0 International:
You are free to use, copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in unchanged form for any legal and non-commercial purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Production Year2022-2025
Production PlaceBudapest, Hungary

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Orb-weaving spiders are known to create stabilimenta—silk situated at particular locations of the web. While anecdotal reports and popular media have long suggested that some spiders arrange debris in their webs to resemble a larger spider, this behavior has not been formally documented in the scientific literature. Here, we provide the first scientific record of this unique behavior in two orb-weaving spiders (Cyclosa spp., Araneidae) from the tropical forests of Peru and the Philippines. We report that these spiders construct stabilimenta composed of detritus and silk, arranging the debris in the web into a shape that visually resembles the silhouette of a larger spider. This structure may serve as a “decoy” that serves an anti-predator function of misdirecting or repelling the attacks of some predators.
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