Interactions of residency status, contest experience, and body size on fighting success in Misumenoides Formosipes (Araneae: Thomisidiae)

Game theory models predict that individuals involved in contests adjust their strategy appropriate to the current value of the contested resource and the resource holding potential (RHP) of their opponent. In this investigation, I examined interactively operating, multiple contest asymmetries on dyadic disputes for precopulatory guarding positions in the crab spider Misumenoides formosipes. In contests between equally sized opponents with no previous contest experience, residents had clear advantages in fighting success over intruders. In the remaining two experiments, asymmetries in experience predicted outcome when tested against residency and size asymmetries. Data from this investigation suggest crab spiders learn strategies through experience rather than rely solely on the assessment of their opponent’s RHP before determining contest effort.