Web transmission properties vary with a spider’s past and current noise exposure
Summary
Animals rely on the reception of accurate information for survival and reproduction. Environmental noise, especially from human activity, challenges information acquisition by disturbing sensory channels and masking relevant cues. Investigations into how animals cope with noise have been heavily biased toward plasticity in information production, often overlooking flexibility in information reception. Studying internal sensory structures is challenging, but web-building spiders offer a unique opportunity to investigate external sensory surfaces—their webs. Here, we explored the potential of the funnel-weaving spider, Agelenopsis pennsylvanica, to influence information reception amid vibratory noise. During web construction, we exposed spiders to a 2 × 2 fully-crossed design: rural/urban collection sites and quiet/loud noise treatments, reflecting natural vibratory noise variation. On the resulting webs, we compared frequency-dependent energy loss between site/treatment groups as vibrations transmitted short and longer distances from an artificial stimulus to the spider’s hunting position. Under loud vibratory noise, rural webs retained more energy in longer-distance vibratory stimuli across a narrow frequency range (350–600 Hz) than all other groups, potentially to improve the reception of relevant prey and mate cues. Conversely, urban/loud webs lost more energy in short-distance vibrations across a broader frequency range (300–1,000 Hz) than all other groups, likely to prevent sensory overload from constant, high-amplitude urban noise. Variable web transmission was related to spiders’ prior (ancestral and/or developmental) and current noise exposure. Our study highlights the capacity of animals to influence information reception amid environmental noise and emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to studying information flow in dynamic environments.
