Skip to main content
Fig. 1 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Fig. 1

From: Males of a sexually cannibalistic spider chemically assess relative female quality

Fig. 1

Design of test arenas. a Photograph of Argiope bruennichi female (centre) in her web with a male (right) inside a test frame. The test frames were custom-made and allowed for stationing females on fixed positions within the arena. The photograph was taken by Anna-Lena Cory. b Scheme of the test arena. Males could choose between three females that were matched for origin (Southern or Northern) and differed in size and distance from the male’s starting point (lowest spider silhouette), whereby there were two options for the middle-distant position. Three of six possible distribution patterns are illustrated by different colours of female silhouettes (from close to far distant: dark purple = small-medium-large, blue-green = medium-large-small, amber = large-small-medium). Note that the scheme does not depict that males were exposed to females from either Northern Europe or Southern Europe only. Adobe Photoshop was used to create the scheme. A licence is held by the Universität Hamburg

Back to article page