Choice of hunting site as a consequence of experience in late-instar crab spiders

Earlier experiences may play an important role in the choice of hunting sit es, but their effects on the foraging repertoire of most animals remain poo rly understood. I tested the role of previous flower choices (hunting sites ) by penultimate-instar female crab spiders Misumena vatia in making subseq uent patch-choice decisions. M. vatia is a sit-and-wait predator, and the t wo flower species used, ox-eye daisy Chrysanthemum leucanthemum and common buttercup Ranunculus acris, are important hunting sites. Spiders with diffe rent immediate experience showed similar abort-term (<1 day) giving-up time s on the two flower species, independent of their previous substrate. Howev er, four-fifths of the individuals that remained a day or longer tended to leave buttercups sooner than daisies, especially if they had previously occ upied daisies. Thus they may directly assess the quality of a potential hun ting site, perhaps in response to prey abundance, but previous experience m ay play a minor role as well. Of spiders that made several consecutive choi ces of hunting sites, those on daisies often confined these runs to daisies (one of two years); those on buttercups did not exhibit comparable fidelit y. Spiders molting into the adult stage almost always subsequently chose th e same flower species (either daisy or buttercup) as the one on which they molted. Thus, juvenile experiences may influence adults, the critical stage when virtually all of the spiders' reproductive resources are gathered, ev en if this resulted from imprinting on their molt sites rather than carryin g information over the molt.