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American Zoologist 1972 12(3):419-426; doi:10.1093/icb/12.3.419
© 1972 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
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Evolution of Social Behavior in Spiders (Araneae; Eresidae and Theridiidae)

ERNST J. KULLMANN
Institut f{diaeresis}r Angewandte Zoologie der Universität Bonn 53 Bonn, West Germany

Whereas most spiders are asocial, species in eight families are known to live all their life in communities and are thus "permanent-social." Their special attributes are: tolerance, interattraction, and cooperation. These peculiarities must have been achieved step by step several times independently. Periodic-social spiders have been studied as a link between asocial and permanent-social spiders. In two families—the cribellate Eresidae and ecribellate Theridiidae—different steps of periodic sociality have been discovered, from brood-care to feeding by regurgitation. The comparative study of the phylogeny of social behavior in both families uncovers remarkable convergences of patterns from asocial to permanent-social via periodical-social species of spiders.


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