Building behavior does not drive rates of phenotypic evolution in spiders

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Animal behavior
• Morphological evolution

Background:

• The role of environmental manipulation in shaping evolutionary lineages is a key, yet empirically untested, question.
• Understanding phenotypic diversity requires investigating factors that influence macroevolutionary rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether macroevolutionary rates of body morphology correlate with the use of built artifacts in spiders.
• To determine if construction behavior is a primary driver of phenotypic diversity.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of macroevolutionary rates in a diverse spider clade.
• Separation of building-dependent evolutionary rates from background rates.
• Statistical assessment of the correlation between artifact use and morphological evolution.

Main Results:

• Variation in the evolution of spider body morphology is poorly explained by the use of built artifacts.
• Building behavior did not significantly correlate with accelerated or altered macroevolutionary rates.
• Inferred building-dependent rates showed minimal impact on overall morphological diversification.

Conclusions:

• Natural selection acting directly on body morphology is the dominant driver of phenotypic diversity in spiders.
• Indirect evolutionary effects mediated by construction behavior play a minor role in morphological evolution.
• The study challenges the notion that niche construction fundamentally dictates lineage evolution in this clade.