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A McGill research team reached this conclusion after looking at changes in the behaviour of individual Bronze Jumping Spiders both before and after exposure to Phosmet, a widely used broad spectrum insecticide. It is a finding with far-reaching implications for agricultural production and ecosystem health.

鈥淏ronze jumping spiders play an important role in orchards and fields, especially at the beginning of the agricultural season, by eating many of the pests like the oblique-banded leafroller, a moth that attacks young plants and fruit,鈥� says Rapha毛l Royaut茅, a former McGill PhD student whose study on the subject was published in Functional Ecology recently. 鈥淔armers spray insecticides on the plants to get rid of these same pests, and it was thought that it had little significant effect on the spiders鈥� behaviours. But we now know that this isn鈥檛 the case.鈥�

The researchers discovered this fact by focusing on the way that exposure to insecticide affected the behaviour of individual spiders, including things like their ability to leap on prey and their interest in exploring new territory, both of which are crucial to their survival and to their role in keeping down pests.

Spider personalities

聽鈥淢ost individuals have an individual signature in their behaviours, what scientist call 鈥減ersonality types鈥� says Royaut茅. 鈥淪ome individuals are willing to take risks when predators are present, explore new territories faster, or capture prey more quickly. But the effects of insecticides on personality types remains poorly described.鈥�

The researchers found that, in general, the behaviour of spiders became more 鈥渦npredictable鈥� and individuals behaved less according to their personality type once they were exposed to insecticide. This could be because some individuals are much more sensitive to the insecticide than others. Interestingly, they also found that male and female spiders were affected differently. Males who had been exposed to the insecticide were able to continue to capture prey as they had before, but 鈥渓ost鈥� their personality type when exploring their environment. Individual females, on the other hand, were much more affected in their ability to capture prey.

鈥淏y looking at the way that insecticides affect individual spider behaviours, rather than averaging out the effects on the spider population as a whole, as is traditionally done in scientific research, we are able to see some significant effects that we might have otherwise missed,鈥� says Chris Buddle, who co-authored the paper. 鈥淚t means we can measure the effects of insecticides before聽any effects on the spider population as a whole are detected, and in this case, it鈥檚 raising some red flags.鈥�

The researchers hope that this study will lead to the reevaluation of procedures used to estimate the toxicity of insecticidal compounds by encouraging other researchers to pay more attention to effects occurring at the individual level.

The mirror experiment reveals spider personalities Focusing on animal personalities changes the picture for scientific research

The work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.

Photo 1: female jumping spider Credit:Crystal Ernst (Flickr album: )

Photo 2: male jumping spider Credit:Crystal Ernst

Under the influence: sublethal exposure to an insecticide affects personality expression in a jumping spider. Royaut茅 R, et al (2015). Functional Ecology. 29: 962-970. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.12413.

Contacts:

raphael [dot] royaute [at] gmail [dot] com (Dr. Rapha毛l Royaut茅)
Department of Biological Sciences,
North Dakota State University

Chris [dot] buddle [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Prof. Chris Buddle)
Department of Natural Resource Sciences
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