Cross-modality priming of visual and olfactory selective attention by a spider that feeds indirectly on vertebrate blood

Evarcha culicivora, a jumping spider from East Africa, specialises in feeding indirectly on vertebrate blood by choosing blood-carrying mosquitoes as preferred prey. Previous studies have shown that this predator can identify its preferred prey by sight alone and also by odour alone. Here we investigate how vision and olfaction work together. Our findings show that, for E. culicivora, cross-modality priming in the context of preying on blood-carrying mosquitoes works in two directions. However, we found no evidence of priming in the context of predation on less preferred prey (midges). When the spider's task was, by sight alone, to find a cryptic lure, it found mosquitoes significantly more often when the odour of mosquitoes was present than when this odour was not present. When the spider's task was to find masked odour, it found mosquitoes significantly more often after previously seeing mosquitoes than when it had not previously seen mosquitoes. When the spider's task was to find conspicuous lures or unmasked odour, the identity of the priming stimulus appeared to be irrelevant. Results were similar regardless of the spider's previous experience with prey and suggest that E. culicivora has an innate inclination to adopt vision-based search images specifically for mosquitoes when primed by mosquito odour and to adopt olfaction-based search images specifically when primed by seeing mosquitoes.