Looking in the mirror of the giant ant spider reduces its aggression

Banna Botanical Garden's Arthropod Behavior and Ecology Research Group graduate student Dong Bing and his supervisors, Chen Zhanqi, Quan Ruichang and Liu Jingxin, found that 1) Aggressive behavior of giant ant spiders is not related to kinship, but is closely related to social conditions: whether it is Relatives, the aggression behavior of giant ant spiders under social conditions is weaker than that of solitary giant ant spiders; 2) the aggression of giant ant spiders has strong plasticity: the solitary giant ant spiders significantly reduced their aggression on the third day after grouping, and again Aggressive behavior was enhanced again after living alone for a week; 3) Visual information plays an important role in the plasticity of aggression in the giant ant spider: the giant ant spider, which has shown strong aggressive behavior, lives in a rearing box with a mirror instead of a real companion Aggression also dropped significantly after six days

The related results will be published online in the journal Animal Cognition in April 2022 under the title " Mirror image stimulation could reverse social-isolation-induced aggressiveness in the high-level subsocial lactating spider " , and will be published on the Animal Behaviourist WeChat public account with " 'Lactating' spider looking in the mirror reduces aggression ' reports .

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Yunnan Provincial Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars

Figure 1: Comparison of aggressive behavior between Kin and Non-kini , Pre-dispersal and Post-dispersal 

Figure 2: Schematic diagram of the repopulation device 

Figure 3: Schematic diagram of the mirror simulation repopulation device