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Geographical Variation In Male Courtship Behavior And Sexual Isolation In Wolf Spiders Of The Genus Schizocosa, Gary L. Miller, Gary L. Stratton, Patricia R. Miller, Eileen Hebets

Eileen Hebets Publications

We surveyed 12 populations of the wolf spider Schizocosa crassipes (Walckenaer) and S. nr. crassipes in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, in the United States, to determine the extent of variation in male courtship behavior when observed in standard laboratory conditions. We observed variation in both the frequency of occurrence and the sequence of the four principal male courtship behaviors and, when compared statistically, most of these behaviors differed between populations. Although there was no clinal pattern in the frequency of courtship behavior, we observed geographically consistent patterns in the sequence in which male courtship behaviors are displayed. We conducted …