Social spiders
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While most spiders hunt alone, there are a few hundred species of social spiders that live in colonies. A.studiosus is one of them. Up to 50 individuals gather together to spin large collective webs, which ensnare larger prey than each spider could trap on its own. All the colony members look the same, but they don’t all behave in the same way. The females can be aggressive or docile. It’s surprisingly easy to suss out their personalities: just put two of them in a small box overnight and check on them the next morning. If they’re both docile, they will have built a joint web in one corner of the box. If one of them is aggressive, the pair will be at opposite corners (you can then pair each individual with a known docile spider to confirm its personality). Colin Wright from the University of Pittsburgh has now found that these personality types do different jobs within the web, creating a natural division of labour. They’re a little like ants and termites, where small w...