Huber Bernhard A
Zoological Research Institute and Museum Alexander Koenig, Adenauerallee 160, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2005 Aug;80(3):363-85. doi: 10.1017/s1464793104006700.
The renaissance of interest in sexual selection during the last decades has fuelled an extraordinary increase of scientific papers on the subject in spiders. Research has focused both on the process of sexual selection itself, for example on the signals and various modalities involved, and on the patterns, that is the outcome of mate choice and competition depending on certain parameters. Sexual selection has most clearly been demonstrated in cases involving visual and acoustical signals but most spiders are myopic and mute, relying rather on vibrations, chemical and tactile stimuli. This review argues that research has been biased towards modalities that are relatively easily accessible to the human observer. Circumstantial and comparative evidence indicates that sexual selection working via substrate-borne vibrations and tactile as well as chemical stimuli may be common and widespread in spiders. Pattern-oriented research has focused on several phenomena for which spiders offer excellent model objects, like sexual size dimorphism, nuptial feeding, sexual cannibalism, and sperm competition. The accumulating evidence argues for a highly complex set of explanations for seemingly uniform patterns like size dimorphism and sexual cannibalism. Sexual selection appears involved as well as natural selection and mechanisms that are adaptive in other contexts only. Sperm competition has resulted in a plethora of morphological and behavioural adaptations, and simplistic models like those linking reproductive morphology with behaviour and sperm priority patterns in a straightforward way are being replaced by complex models involving an array of parameters. Male mating costs are increasingly being documented in spiders, and sexual selection by male mate choice is discussed as a potential result. Research on sexual selection in spiders has come a long way since Darwin, whose spider examples are reanalysed in the context of contemporary knowledge, but the same biases and methodological constraints have persisted almost unchanged through the current boom of research.
在过去几十年里，对性选择的兴趣再度兴起，这推动了关于蜘蛛这一主题的科学论文数量大幅增加。研究既聚焦于性选择过程本身，例如所涉及的信号和各种方式，也关注其模式，即取决于某些参数的配偶选择和竞争的结果。性选择在涉及视觉和听觉信号的案例中得到了最清晰的证明，但大多数蜘蛛近视且无声，它们更多地依赖振动、化学和触觉刺激。本综述认为，研究一直偏向于人类观察者相对容易获取的方式。间接和比较证据表明，通过底物传播的振动、触觉以及化学刺激起作用的性选择在蜘蛛中可能很常见且广泛存在。以模式为导向的研究聚焦于蜘蛛提供了极佳模型对象的几种现象，如两性体型差异、婚期喂食、性食同类现象和精子竞争。越来越多的证据表明，对于看似一致的模式，如体型差异和性食同类现象，需要一套高度复杂的解释。性选择似乎与自然选择以及仅在其他背景下具有适应性的机制都有关。精子竞争导致了大量形态和行为上的适应性变化，像那些将生殖形态与行为以及精子优先模式直接联系起来的简单模型，正被涉及一系列参数的复杂模型所取代。蜘蛛中雄性交配成本的记录越来越多，雄性配偶选择的性选择被作为一种潜在结果进行讨论。自达尔文时代以来，蜘蛛性选择的研究已经取得了长足的进展，他所举的蜘蛛例子在当代知识背景下得到了重新分析，但在当前研究热潮中，相同的偏见和方法限制几乎一直未变。
