COURTSHIP AND MATING 75 



the transfer of the semen. But there are difficulties. The object of 

 his attention may not be of the same mind as he is, and she usually 

 exceeds him in size and strength. Further, since virtually all of her 

 life has been devoted to capturing and feeding on animals of suit- 

 able size, her first instinct is predatory. That the interloper is a male 

 of her own kind is immaterial, if she is not conditioned to distin- 

 guish him from any other suitable prey. There consequently ensue 

 certain more or less marked preliminary activities before the actual 

 mating, which constitute the spiders' courtship. Most of the initia- 

 tive is taken by the male, who being the less valuable sex is con- 

 ditioned to make the first advances and brave the danger. Upon him 

 rests the burden of announcing himself in a convincing manner, and 

 of stimulating the female to a point where sexual union is possible. 



Among the aerial spiders and other web spinners, courtship usu- 

 ally consists first of some kind of vibration of the threads of the 

 web, and later of stroking the body of the female. Among the 

 hunting spiders there is a considerable diversity in methods of 

 courting. The species blessed with good eyesight have developed 

 a relatively complicated prenuptial procedure in the course of 

 which the male advertises his presence by movements of the legs 

 and body. Correlated with this behavior to some degree are various 

 epigamic structures such as brushes or ornaments on the legs and 

 tufts of hair on the head. Spiders with poorer eyesight are ordi- 

 narily much more conservative in their prenuptial routine, since the 

 female would be unable to see the details; but occasionally body 

 ornaments are present in this group as well. There are numerous 

 intergrades between a well-marked courtship, as exemplified in the 

 bizarre love dances of the jumping spiders, and almost no courtship 

 at all; the fundamental mechanism and the particular path that each 

 group has followed to arrive at its present specialization are subjects 

 that must be discussed at length. 



The prime descriptive and analytical studies of spider courtship 

 and sexual biology, following the classical work of Anton Menge, 

 were made in the United States by G. W. and E. G. Peckham in 

 1889 and 1890, and by T. H. Montgomery in 1903 and 1910. In 

 addition to fascinating descriptions of the sexual processes in many 

 species, quite adequate explanations of the significance and evolution 

 of various phenomena in terms of selection were presented. The 

 Peckhams were strong exponents of sexual selection as outlined by 

 Darwin, and concluded that the female jumping spider responded 

 to the charm and beauty of the posturing male and made a conscious 



