Social experience affects female mate preferences for a visual trait in a wolf spider

Females often prefer males with bright, showy, or large secondary sexual characters. However, social experience can result in variation in female preferences, with evidence of sexual imprinting in some taxa. In the brush-legged wolf spider, Schizocosa ocreata, asynchrony of maturation provides a time period in which imprinting may occur. We tested whether adult females demonstrated plasticity in their visual preferences for male leg tuft size after experience with digitally courting males during their penultimate stage. Penultimate instar females were presented visual courtship signals from males with small, average, or large tufts; a mixture of tuft sizes; or no males at all. During Week 2 of adulthood, each female was presented playback of digital courting small- and/or large-tufted males in both no-choice and two-choice presentations. Adult female preferences varied significantly with prior experience. Females exposed to only large-tufted males or males with a mixture of tuft sizes demonstrated more receptivity displays to large-tufted males than small-tufted males. Females exposed to only small-tufted males demonstrated more receptivity displays toward small-tufted males than large-tufted males. Because results suggested the possibility of sexual imprinting, we tested for reversibility. A subset of females was retested for selectivity in two-choice trials, revealing a positive correlation between Week 2 and Week 5 female selectivity. Females previously exposed to small-tufted males, however, no longer maintained their preference for small-tufted males in Week 5. This study demonstrates the effects of an individual’s social environment on mating preferences, and the importance of age and timing when studying sexual imprinting.