Meeting Abstract
Animal signals can be highly diverse even in the same genus . Male jumping spiders in the hyper diverse genus Habronattus court females by performing a series of complex displays that include visual and vibratory signals. These multi-modal displays vary widely across species, and it is unclear what structures males use to produce their vibratory songs. We examined variation in sound producing morphology across the group using a combination of of video and imaging techniques. We documented male songs of different species using high speed video recordings and laser vibrometry and then imaged their song producing structures using Scanning Electron Microscopy. Comparisons of the imaged structures reveal distinct morphologies across different species groups but similar morphologies between sister taxa. Our work suggests that the evolution of different song producing mechanisms may have driven diversification in the group.
