What kind of bewilderment is it to paint foundation and eyeliner for spiders?

it's Lisa Taylor (Lisa A. Taylor) 's job to make up spiders.

it was a jumping spider a few millimeters big, and Taylor gently opened its legs and smeared the red part of its face with a slender black eyeliner-a delicate job that required great patience, like painting on a grain of rice. In short, the little face of the spider should all be painted black, be careful not to get the rest dirty, let alone put it into the spider's eyes. All this has to be done in 1 minute, and if you make a mistake, there will be no chance to modify it.

(spiders and cosmetics, how do they come together?

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Taylor is a biologist at the University of Florida. And changing spiders into new shapes with cosmetics is her preparation for scientific research.

putting makeup on spiders is also a serious study.

Taylor and colleagues studied the colors and patterns of jumping spiders in this way to determine what signals these appearance features convey.

their subjects are mainly jumping spiders called Habronattus pyrethrin, whose males are born with bright red faces and a patch of green on their forelegs-visual signals to show females during courtship. In addition, they also have black patterns on their backs, which are not used for sex but may have a special meaning in the eyes of predators.

(jumping spider Habronattus pyrethrin (is male here) Wikipedia)

in the experiment, the researchers used cosmetics and pigments to change the original appearance of spiders, and then put them in front of the opposite sex or predators to see how the latter reacted. In this way, people can know what kind of message these appearance features convey.

countdown to 1 minute, makeup begins!

these jumping spiders are only a few millimeters big, and they can only be done with anatomical microscopes and the tiniest brushes-which require not only patience but also quick eyes and hands.

(jumping spider Habronattus pyrethrin and a coin, it is so small | Malika Ihle, Lisa Anne Taylor)

first, researchers need to anesthetize spiders with carbon dioxide to make them unconscious. Then, they will dip a little white glue on the head of a thin nail and stick the little spider to it to fix it. Next, it's time to test hand stability and speed: the anesthesia time is short, the operation time is only 1-2 minutes, and the researchers must paint the color quickly and accurately before the spider wakes up, which cannot be modified once the painting is wrong. After the makeup is finished, the spider is gently removed and awakened. After a 12-hour break, the little spiders, who have changed into a new image, are ready for a formal experiment.

what exactly does this "new makeup" look like? The specific style depends on the content of the experiment.

for example, when studying the courtship display of male spiders, the focus is on changing the red and green areas they show to females. At this time, the bright red faces of the boys will be blackened by eyeliner, or the green on their arms will be covered with foundation.

(compared with male jumping spiders before and after makeup, black eyeliner covers the original red on the upper right side, and the foundation covers the green on the spider's forelegs on the lower right side. Lisa A. Taylor and Kevin J. McGraw)

while studying the back pattern, the researchers made a "sexual makeup" for the spider: using foundation and eyeliner, they painted female spiders with similar male patterns. And painted the male as simple as the female monochrome.

(girls painted in boy style (left) and boys painted in girl style | Collette Cook et al.)

in the experiment, the choice of cosmetics is also quite fastidious. Eyeliner needs to be easy to dilute, easy to adjust color, and their spectral characteristics should be carefully examined.

what do people find after putting on makeup?

through control experiments, the researchers tested how heterosexual peers or predators reacted to these make-up spiders.

as expected, the study found that bright red faces make male jumping spiders more heterosexual: in sunny environments, females are more likely to mate with males who keep red faces, while males with black faces are less favored. However, female jumping spiders do not seem to be very sensitive to subtle changes in color. If you dilute the color of eyeliner, only slightly darken the face of the male jumping spider, it will not significantly affect the success rate of mating.

(male jumping spiders show themselves to females | Lisa A. Taylor and Kevin J. McGraw)

while experiments of swapping male and female shapes show that spiders with black stripes on their backs and looking like boys are more vulnerable to predators (the predators in the experiment are a different kind of spider), regardless of their actual gender and behavior patterns. The results were different from what the researchers had expected: they thought black stripes had a protective effect on male spiders.

at present, the question about the body color of jumping spiders has not been fully solved. It seems that the "spider makeup artists" will be busy for a while longer.

PS: jumping spider eyeliner is Urban Decay's "Perversion", and the foundation is bareMinerals foundation if you you're curious.

there is a detailed video of the makeup process in the first reference, which you can take a look at if you are interested. But instead of eyeliner, gray paint is used in the video.

some questions you might want to ask:

is makeup harmful to spiders?

the researchers believe that there should be at least no obvious toxicity because females of the species sometimes eat males directly during courtship, while girls who eat boys in the makeup look healthy (what happened to spiders after

2)? Can you take off your makeup?

won't take off makeup. I don't want to talk about the end of the experiment: makeup spiders will be frozen and killed and then measured spectral characteristics. The wrong painting seems to have been executed. Spiders without makeup seem to be released.

3 how do I know it's not caused by the smell of cosmetics?

the experiment set up a control group, which will smear the spider's body with the same cosmetics, but other parts that are not easy to be seen by the other party.