↓ Skip to main content

A meal or a male: the ‘whispers’ of black widow males do not trigger a predatory response in females

Overview of attention for article published in Frontiers in Zoology, January 2014
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Among the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#11 of 698)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (92nd percentile)

Mentioned by

news
20 news outlets
blogs
3 blogs
twitter
16 X users
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page

Citations

dimensions_citation
26 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
55 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
A meal or a male: the ‘whispers’ of black widow males do not trigger a predatory response in females
Published in
Frontiers in Zoology, January 2014
DOI 10.1186/1742-9994-11-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Samantha Vibert, Catherine Scott, Gerhard Gries

Abstract

Female spiders are fine-tuned to detect and quickly respond to prey vibrations, presenting a challenge to courting males who must attract a female's attention but not be mistaken for prey. This is likely particularly important at the onset of courtship when a male enters a female's web. In web-dwelling spiders, little is known about how males solve this conundrum, or about their courtship signals. Here we used laser Doppler vibrometry to study the vibrations produced by males and prey (house flies and crickets) on tangle webs of the western black widow Latrodectus hesperus and on sheet webs of the hobo spider Tegenaria agrestis. We recorded the vibrations at the location typically occupied by a hunting female spider. We compared the vibrations produced by males and prey in terms of their waveform, dominant frequency, frequency bandwidth, amplitude and duration. We also played back recorded male and prey vibrations through the webs of female L. hesperus to determine the vibratory parameters that trigger a predatory response in females.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 16 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 55 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 2 4%
Canada 1 2%
Unknown 52 95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 16 29%
Researcher 11 20%
Student > Ph. D. Student 9 16%
Student > Master 6 11%
Other 4 7%
Other 7 13%
Unknown 2 4%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 32 58%
Environmental Science 5 9%
Medicine and Dentistry 4 7%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 1 2%
Arts and Humanities 1 2%
Other 4 7%
Unknown 8 15%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 194. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 September 2023.
All research outputs
#205,055
of 25,416,581 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Zoology
#11
of 698 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,880
of 320,240 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Zoology
#3
of 28 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,416,581 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 698 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 320,240 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 28 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.