Untangling the web of behaviors used in spider orb weaving


SOCIETY FOR INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY
2021 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (VAM)
January 3 – Febuary 28, 2021

Meeting Abstract


82-6  Sat Jan 2  Untangling the web of behaviors used in spider orb weaving Gordus, A*; Corver, A; Wilkerson, N; Miller, J; Johns Hopkins University; Johns Hopkins University; Johns Hopkins University; Johns Hopkins University AGORDUS@JHU.EDU https://gorduslab.bio.jhu.edu/

Many innate behaviors are the result of multiple sensorimotor programs that are dynamically coordinated to produce higher-order behaviors such as courtship or architecture construction. Extended phenotypes such as architecture are especially useful for ethological study because the structure itself is a physical record of behavioral intent. A particularly elegant and easily quantifiable structure is the spider orb-web. The geometric symmetry and regularity of these webs have long generated interest in their behavioral origin. However, quantitative analyses of this behavior have been sparse due to the difficulty of recording web-making in real-time. To address this, we have developed a novel assay enabling real-time, high-resolution tracking of limb movements and web structure produced by the hackled orb-weaver Uloborus diversus. With its small brain size of approximately 100,000 neurons, the spider U. diversus offers a tractable model organism for the study of complex behaviors. Using deep learning frameworks for limb tracking, and unsupervised behavioral clustering methods, we have developed an atlas of stereotyped movement motifs and are investigating the behavioral state transitions of which the geometry of the web is an emergent property. In addition to tracking limb movements, we have developed algorithms to track the web’s dynamic graph structure. We aim to model the relationship between the spider’s sensory experience on the web and its motor decisions, thereby identifying the sensory and internal states contributing to this sensorimotor transformation.

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