Talk:Nephila pilipes

Sexual Dimormphism Observed in Nehila pilipes

Hello I am researching the sexual dimorphism in the Nephila species and came across the following articles which I think may be useful to this page: Below are my references to the sexual dimorphism in the spider Nephila species along with my own comments on the articles. Feel free to comment!

1. Elgar, Mark A., and Babette F. Fahey. "Sexual Cannibalism, Competition, and Size Dimorphism in the Orb-weaving Spider Nephila Plumipes Latreille (Araneae: Araneoidea)." Behavioral Ecology 7.2 (1996): 195. Environment Complete. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.

Link: http://ezp.slu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eih&AN=8479804&site=eds-live

1. Kuntner, Matjaž, and Mark A. Elgar. "Evolution and Maintenance of Sexual Size Dimorphism: Aligning Phylogenetic and Experimental Evidence." Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Front. Ecol. Evol. 2 (2014). Google Scholar. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2014.00026

1. Kuntner, Matjaž, Shichang Zhang, Matjaž Gregorič, and Daiqin Li. "Nephila Female Gigantism Attained through Post-maturity Molting." Journal of Arachnology 40.3 (2012): 345-47. JSTOR Journals. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.

Link: http://www.jstor.org.ezp.slu.edu/stable/41758984

1. Schneider, Jutta, and Mark Elgar. "The Combined Effects of Pre- and Post-Insemination Sexual Selection on Extreme Variation in Male Body Size." Evolutionary Ecology 19.5 (2005): 419. Edb. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10682-005-8310-6

I found several citations which help link the sexual dimorphism in spiders to several tested possibilities. There seems to be some disagreement in the scientific community in the cause of the difference in size of males and females, with females being smaller. The Journal of Arachnology article titled "Nephila Female Gigantism Attained through Post-maturity Molting." gave evidence for the Nephila pilipes that the large size difference was significantly affected by the female spiders continued molting after maturity which increased there carapaces, outer shell, size. While Nephila plumipes Latreille spider study in the Behavioral Ecology article "Sexual Cannibalism, Competition, and Size Dimorphism in the Orb-weaving Spider” explained the sexual dimorphism as a product of two competing selections, one that smaller males are preferred by females as they are less likely to be cannibalized but, that when males compete between each other the larger males win. Other evidence of the species sexual dimorphism comes from the Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution article which explained through an examination of the species as a whole that the size selection for both males and females is moving toward larger animals but, that the rate of male spider growth is less than that of female spiders. Then the article from Evolutionary Ecology also supported the idea that there are different forces acting on the selection of males which males reproductive success favor larger and smaller spiders in different ways whereas females reproductive success was greater when they are larger not smaller. These articles are all a starting point for further examination of what are the key factors influencing sexual dimorphism in the golden orb weaver.

Update: I have added more sources about various explanations scientists have been testing regarding the dimorphism in N. pilipes. With each explanation I have included the genetic/environmental basis for it. Also, I have tried to explain that this dimorphism has been seen in the species throughout its populations with each having smaller males than females. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbiology (talk • contribs) 19:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I really liked the information in your article and how it was organized. I made copy edits, and tried to cut out any extra wordiness. There is a part in your article where you said: “Fecundity is the term used to describe the selection of larger females as larger females can lay more eggs.” I think that you could possibly take this definition out or just put fecundity in double brackets and link it to its own page, just to make your article more concise. You also talk about scramble competition but you don't really explain what it is specifically. I think giving a quick general definition of what it is would help make that section a little clearer. I had trouble understanding what you were trying to say with this sentence: “This explanation means that smaller males had a greater fitness due to the behavior of the female spider to move around in maturity and when molting as the environmental conditions were such that females were more likely to move out from their webs than to constantly stay in them.” Perhaps reword it a little? Other than those changes, I thought your article had good information and did a good job of explaining how sexual dimorphism came to arise in the species. It might be helpful to possibly include a little bit of information about a closely related species of spiders and if the same trend of males being smaller than females does or doesn’t hold true in that case. Aa3z4 (talk) 04:38, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

N.pilipes from Thailand

Thailand is not listed on this page as a location for N.pilipes, however, I have personally observed it there and it could be reasonably inferred from the listed locations that it exists there. Suggest updating page to reflect this.Pignoli 13:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

N. Pilipes in the Philippines.

I have seen one of this Nephila Pilipes species in a jungle in the Philippines, I think it is more of an introduced species rather than native in the Philippines, it's appearance in the Philippines is recent. Update the article please. --121.54.68.114 (talk) 11:44, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Nephila pilipes in the Philippines.

Confirmed by me and the locals it is a common orb weaving spider in the thick tropical rainforest of the Philippines, it is not an introduced species but it is also native to the Philippines.--121.54.68.114 (talk) 09:05, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Size

Female of the species is listed as 'large' at 30-50mm. Perhaps that size isn't right.-- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.178.20 (talk) 00:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Does this include the legs? I have photos of this species mesuring 20 to 25 cm including the legs. Yann (talk) 14:12, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I was very impressed with the sexual dimorphism section. I would suggest only adding a couple things including: maybe break up the writing with subheadings for each different explanation, another thing you could do is add more hyperlinks for some of the more scientific terms within the work. Overall the writing is very well done and flows nicely. Adowney31 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:46, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Overall, I thought the additions were beneficial and relevant and followed a logical order. However, I was slightly confused with section titled "Co-evolution". The information was good, but the sentence structure made it very difficult to understand. I felt lost, especially towards the end. I would suggest re-writing this to make it more easily understood.Kyranavia (talk) 15:22, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi thank you for you both for your responses. I can now see how my wording was a bit confusing and a little to wordy in several parts (like the variation in populations section). I have attempted to restructure the work in a format that flows together better as well. Also, with regards to co-evolution title that was making it a bit hard to understand the mechanism of the dimorphism, I have retitled. Coevolution has become female gigantism to better show that this hypothesis has females evolving a larger size while male dwarfism was left as is as it shows the hypothesis explains the dimorphism through evolution of a smaller size by males. Furthermore, I have added a section on female fecundity to the Female Gigantism section and I hope it makes the relationship between the original male-female adaptions and the current fitness benefit of larger females. As it was mentioned the comment on the protein structure of webs seemed to come out of nowhere and, I had originally put it in to show that there is a great variation in the spiders but that it is more evident in other traits. By removing it and sticking to talking about dimorphisms the section will remain more focused on the actual topic. I hope my revisions have made the document easier to read and I would love to hear further.Cbiology (talk) 05:04, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Your article was very good and informative, but I noticed a couple of things. One was that you are still summarizing research done on the species. I changed what you said about female to male size ratio. You wrote, "This has led many researchers in the field to characterize the species as one where the males are "4-10 times smaller than females" with regards to sexual dimorphism" and I changed it to "Males can be 4-10 times smaller than the females." There was another case similar, but I did want to change it and lose the meaning, so I urge you to look at the part that says "Through experimentation on N. pilipes spiders specifically, it is shown that the male spiders that were able to find the female spiders first often fertilized a greater percentage of her eggs than other males." Just make sure that you are not summarizing research articles, but rather generalizing their findings. Also, I was hoping you could clarify what scramble competition is through context clues, and also it might be a good idea to link that to an existing article about scramble competition. I did that (linking articles) to a couple of other key terms and removed lengthy explanations from your article, which I think helped the information specific to sexual dimorphism flow better. And then finally, the last sentence in your article was a bit confusing to me: "This explanation means that smaller males had a greater fitness due to the behavior of the female spider to move around in maturity and when molting as the environmental conditions were such that females were more likely to move out from their webs than to constantly stay in them." It is a bit too wordy and somewhat confusing. I would recommend breaking up that sentence into two sentences. I was also confused about this sentence, because it seemed to be talking more about female giganticism rather than male dwarfism. Should it be in the female giganticism section? Overall, you had pretty clear writing and I think it is understandable to someone who has not taken an Evolutionary Biology course. Biol3010 evo bsp (talk) 13:19, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you to everyone who has commented and corrected my additions so far. I see that the sentence “This explanation means that smaller males had a greater fitness due to the behavior of the female spider to move around in maturity and when molting as the environmental conditions were such that females were more likely to move out from their webs than to constantly stay in them.” was far too confusing for readers to understand as both Aa3z4 and Biol3010 have both pointed out, and so I have reworded it so it flows better with the rest of the male dwarfism section. Also, as it was pointed out by Biol3010 I often left hints of research articles instead of just generalizing what they said while citing them so I have attempted to rework the reference to experiments. In the male dwarfism section I attempted to do this by removing mention of experimentation and stating the results and facts of the experiment used. Additionally, as in previous corrections I attempted to reword overly wordy/confusing sentences like the last sentence of the male dwarfism section and the beginning sentences of both the female gigantism and male dwarfism sections. I also added links to scramble competition and molting so that if people were confused by these topics they could see the main pages dealing with them. Two additional words that I hyperlinked in the article were scramble competition in the male dwarfism section and selection in the female gigantism section. Cbiology (talk) 21:40, 5 December 2015 (UTC)