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UF to receive additional $7.4 million in state performance funding

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The University of Florida will receive an additional $7.4 million in state performance funding this year versus last year, bringing the total allotted to the university since 2014 to more than $103 million. The money will be used in UF’s ongoing efforts to hire and retain the world’s best and brightest faculty and keep the university on the path to becoming one of the nation’s very best public research universities.
UF received 95 points out of 100 – the highest score of all the 11 public universities in Florida measured in the performance-funding model created in 2014 by the Florida Board of Governors, the governing body for the State University System of Florida.
The university’s high score was due in part to increasing its number of licenses and options executed on technologies developed at the university, a measure of how successful its ideas are in the marketplace, from 147 to 261. That distinction gave UF a No. 3 ranking nationwide, according to the latest statistics released in November by the Association of University Technology Managers.
UF credits its success in that arena to playing “the long game,” focusing on closing deals, fostering a great reputation and encouraging commercially targeted thinking among faculty.
“I am very pleased with the University of Florida’s top score and grateful for the ongoing support of the governor, the Legislature and the Board of Governors,” UF President Kent Fuchs said. “When UF succeeds, the state of Florida wins.”
Eight of the metrics are common to all universities. They are the following, with UF’s score indicated on a 1-to-10 scale with 10 being the best:

  • percent of bachelor’s graduates employed (Earning $25,000+) or continuing their education — 8
  • bachelor’s degrees awarded in areas of strategic emphasis — 10
  • median wages of bachelor’s graduates employed one year after graduation — 10
  • university access rate (percent of undergraduates with a Pell grant) – 9
  • average cost to the student — 8
  • graduate degrees awarded in areas of strategic emphasis — 10
  • six-year graduation rate — 10
  • academic progress rate — 10

Two of the 10 metrics are “choice” metrics: one picked by the Board of Governors and one by the university boards of trustees. For UF, those metrics are:

  • number of licenses and options executed annually on its technologies — 10
  • faculty awards — 10

Based on their excellence or improvement on the board’s metrics, universities are eligible for a share of the $520 million allocated by the governor and Legislature during the 2017 legislative session.
“In the past four years, we’ve seen steady improvements at the system level and for individual universities,” said Tom Kuntz, Board of Governors’ chair. “Especially exciting is that we’ve seen universities in the bottom three soar to the top of the pack as they’ve renewed their focus on student success.”
The board’s newest metric, cost-to-the-student, also pointed to positive outcomes. The average cost in the SUS of earning a bachelor’s degree is less than $15,000 after financial aid (grants, scholarships and waivers).  The average cost at the University of Florida has been calculated by the board to be $10,700.  Furthermore, University Work Plans, in which institutions lay out their future financial goals, indicate that SUS universities are expected to decrease their prices further in the coming years, cutting the student cost per degree from $14,820 to $14,090 by the 2019-2020 school year.
“Affordability has been a priority for the governor and the Legislature as well as the Board of Governors because it increases student access and relieves student debt,” said Ned Lautenbach, vice chair of the Board of Governors and chair of the Budget and Finance Committee. “It’s exciting to see the universities turning that goal into a reality.”

Drill holes in fossil shells point to bigger predators picking on small prey

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Michal Kowalewski, a researcher with the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, holds an American bittersweet shell. The hole in the shell testifies to the mollusk’s grisly end as a meal for a drilling predator. This fossil is about 2 million years old. (Photo by Kristen Grace, Florida Museum of Natural History)

The drill holes left in fossil shells by hunters such as snails and slugs show marine predators have grown steadily bigger and more powerful over time but stuck to picking off small prey, rather than using their added heft to pursue larger quarry, new research shows.
The study, published today in Science, found the percent of shell area drilled by predators increased 67-fold over the past 500 million years, suggesting that the ratio of predatory driller size and tough-shelled prey increased substantially. The study’s authors say the widening gap could be caused by greater numbers and better nutritional value of prey species and perhaps to minimize predators’ vulnerability to their own enemies.
“These drill holes track the rise of bullies: bigger, stronger predators hunting the same size prey their much smaller predecessors did,” said Michal Kowalewski, the Jon L. and Beverly A. Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida and a study co-author. “What’s exciting about this project is that we found a drilled fossil shell can tell us both the size of the prey and the size of the predator that ate it. This gives us the first glimpse into how the size of predators and prey are related to each other and how this size relation changed through the history of life.”
Predation is a major ecological process in modern ecosystems, but its role in shaping animal evolution has been contentious, Kowalewski said. This study sheds light on predation’s ability to drive evolutionary changes by supporting a critical tenet of the escalation hypothesis: the idea that top-down pressure from increasingly larger and stronger predators helped trigger key evolutionary developments in prey species such as defensive armor, better mobility and stealth tactics like burrowing into the sea floor.
Other than a few rare finds of predator and prey preserved mid-battle, a lack of direct fossil evidence has hindered a clearer understanding of how predators have influenced other species’ evolutionary paths.
Adiel Klompmaker, then a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum, was working on a database of drill holes—the marks left in a shell by a predator such as a snail or slug—when he saw their untapped potential as “smoking gun” evidence of deadly saltwater dramas.
Drilling predators such as snails, slugs, octopuses and beetles penetrate their prey’s protective skeleton and eat the soft flesh inside, leaving behind a telltale hole in the shell. Trillions of these drill holes exist in the fossil record, providing valuable information about predation over millions of years. But while drill holes have been used extensively to explore questions about the intensity of predation, Klompmaker realized they could also shed light on predator-prey size ratios.
Just as a bullet hole indicates the caliber of gun fired, a drill hole points to the size of the predator that created it—regardless of what kind of animal it was. By compiling these hole sizes, researchers can gain insights into 500 million years of predator-prey interactions.
“Finding direct evidence of behavior in the fossil record can be difficult, certainly in comparison to all animal behavior we can simply observe today,” said Klompmaker, the study’s lead author and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he conducted most of the research. “Drill holes in shells are an exception to this rule.”
To determine whether drill hole size is a good predictor of the size of the animal that made it, the researchers compiled 556 measurements of predator sizes and the diameter of the holes they produced. The measurements spanned 14 families and five phyla of drillers, both terrestrial and marine: mollusks, arthropods, nematodes, Cercozoa (parasitic protists) and Foraminifera (amoeboid protists). The team found a strong correlation between predator size and the diameter of drill holes.
“It’s similar to how the size of your arm is related to your height and overall body mass,” Kowalewski said. “It’s not a perfect correlation, but there is a very strong relation between the two.”
The team then used data compiled from 6,943 drilled animals representing many fossil species to examine trends in the size of drill holes, prey size and predator-prey size ratios, starting in the Cambrian Period—when most marine organisms appeared—and running to the present.
Despite growing bigger, predators may not have needed to switch to larger targets because prey became more nutritious through time, the researchers said. In the Paleozoic Era, about 541 million to 252 million years ago, clam-like organisms known as brachiopods were the most common prey available. But predators gained few nutrients from brachiopods and gradually transitioned to mollusks, similarly-sized but meatier prey that became abundant in oceans after the Paleozoic.
“In modern oceans, a predator can gain quite a bit of food from eating a small animal,” Kowalewski said. “This was not the case 500 million years ago when much less fleshy prey items were on the menu. Ancient small prey could only satisfy the needs of small predators.”
Another factor circles back to the escalation hypothesis: As predation ramped up, predators themselves were increasingly vulnerable to their own predators. Chasing, hunting and drilling into prey creates a window of time when predators are exposed to their own enemies, such as crabs and fish, Klompmaker said. Pursuing small, easy prey could lessen the risk to predators themselves.
Seth Finnegan of the University of California, Berkeley and John Huntley of the University of Missouri also co-authored the study.
Funding for the research came from the National Science Foundation, the Packard Foundation and the Jon L. and Beverly A. Thompson Endowment Fund.
Sources:
Michal Kowalewski, [email protected]
Adiel Klompmaker, [email protected]
Writer:
Natalie van Hoose, 352-273-1922, [email protected]

UF to hire 500 faculty in major new initiative

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The University of Florida will hire 500 new faculty to further enhance teaching and research and to continue to be one of the very best research universities in the nation, UF President Kent Fuchs announced today. UF’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution in support of the announcement.
Funding for the new hires and compensation increases will come from state allocations, alumni and friends, as well as university resources.
“We know what we need to do and we are laser-focused on several areas that will have the greatest impact on our educational and research missions while giving UF an edge to compete successfully with the nation’s other top institutions for talented faculty, students and staff,” Fuchs said. “UF ranks among the top 10 public research universities and we have our eye on being among the top five.”
The 500 new faculty hires represent a number over and above the 300 to 400 faculty that UF hires annually to replace those who retire or leave the university, UF Provost Joe Glover said.
Funding for new hires and compensation increases will come initially from a $52 million allocation to UF that the Legislature approved earlier this year and from reallocated internal resources, Glover said. The university will also seek additional funding from a variety of sources for future years.
The hiring plan was created to address two primary university goals: reaching top-ranked status by strengthening various research disciplines, and improving the university’s student-faculty ratio, a widely recognized metric in determining an institution’s excellence and stature.
UF’s current student-faculty ratio is 20 to 1; the 500 new hires ultimately will result in a student-faculty ratio of 16 to 1. By comparison, the ratio at the University of Michigan, is 15 to 1. (Michigan, like UF, belongs to the Association of American Universities and is considered a peer institution to UF; others include the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California, Berkeley.)
The new faculty will be hired in a variety of fields, Glover said, but “certainly a good portion will be in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and health. We will also give priority to areas focused on new business start-ups, tech transfer and economic development.”
The new hires will be in addition to the growth of 115 faculty hired in the past three years with funding the Legislature has provided as part of UF’s designation as a preeminent university.
The announcement of the new hiring initiative follows Wednesday’s news that UF faculty achieved a new high of nearly $800 million in research expenditures for the year. UF also announced an expected new record in annual fundraising topping $440 million. Additionally, five faculty became members of the National Academies during the year.
Fuchs said that UF has already made tremendous progress – and the new initiatives and records will propel UF to the highest ranks.
“In the vast majority of university rankings, the University of Florida is among the top 10 public research universities in the nation,” Fuchs said.  “Our goal now is to be among the top five.”

University of Florida research spending at record $791 million in 2016

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Spending for research at the University of Florida, a key indicator of how healthy an institution’s research enterprise is, reached a record high of $791.3 million in 2016, according to a new report to the National Science Foundation.
UF’s response to NSF’s Higher Education Research and Development, or HERD, Survey showed a 7 percent increase in total expenditures over 2015’s total of $739.5 million. Expenditures represent how much grant money the university actually spends in any given year. So, for example, a five-year, $10 million award might report expenditures of $2 million per year.
Life sciences research, including health and agricultural research, accounted for $561.9 million or about 71 percent of the total, up 4.1 percent over 2015. Engineering research accounted for $94.6 million or 12 percent, up 8.3 percent. Physical sciences like physics and chemistry accounted for $28.2 million or 4 percent, a 7.3 percent increase.
Computer and information sciences and math accounted for $19.9 million, a 102.3 percent increase; geosciences totaled $15.8 million, up 7.2 percent; social sciences totaled $14.7 million, down 10.4 percent; psychology totaled $6.4 million, up 26.8 percent; and non-science and engineering fields like business, communications and education totaled $49.3 million, up 24 percent over 2015.
“This report illustrates the broad diversity of research underway at the University of Florida,” said David Norton, UF’s vice president for research. “Not only is this research helping to cure diseases, feed the world and probe the mysteries of the universe – it also has a significant economic impact on Florida’s economy.”
NSF collects expenditure data from universities around the country and compiles it into a report that will be released later this year. Last year, based on fiscal year 2015 data, UF ranked 25th among all universities and 16th among public universities in research expenditures.
Among the largest projects under way in 2016 were the HCV Target project to coordinate research on Hepatitis C across more than 100 universities around the world; a U.S. Department of Agriculture project to help pine growers throughout the South adapt to changing growth patterns brought on by climate change; a Florida Museum-led National Science Foundation project to digitize millions of specimens in natural history museums around the country; and a U.S. Air Force project in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering to study the effects of lightning in the ionosphere and its impact on satellite communications.
Writer: Joseph Kays, 352-392-8229, [email protected]
Source: David Norton, [email protected]

First Cases of H3N2 Dog Flu Confirmed in Florida

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The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, in coordination with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, announced today that the University of Florida has confirmed seven cases of H3N2 canine influenza virus, a.k.a. “dog flu.” Six additional results for the virus are pending. All dogs being treated are in stable condition. There is no evidence that H3N2 canine influenza virus infects people.
While H3N2 has been circulating throughout the country since 2015, this is the first time it has been confirmed in Florida. This is a highly contagious virus. Fortunately, the mortality rate is low. Dog owners can have their veterinarians vaccinate their dogs against canine influenza viruses.
If dog owners suspect a case of dog flu, they should call their veterinarian prior to going to the clinic in order to decrease the chances of spreading the virus to other animals at the clinic. Many dogs have a fever, decreased appetite and lethargy during the first few days of illness. Most dogs recover at home without any complications. Some require hospitalization.
More information on canine influenza can be found here.
For more information about the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, call 1-800-HELP-FLA or visit FreshFromFlorida.com.

Flagler and University of Florida develop bridge program for Sport Management majors

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Flagler College President William T. Abare Jr. and Dr. Michael B. Reid, Dean and Professor, College of Health & Human Performance, University of Florida, sign agreements between Flagler and UF for a Sport Management Bridge Program for undergraduate Flagler students on May 22, 2017. Others pictured, from left to right: Incoming Flagler President Dr. Joseph Joyner, Flagler Chancellor Dr. William Proctor, Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Yvan Kelly, Flagler Trustee David Drysdale, Flagler Sport Management Chair Dr. Calvin Hunter, and Dr. Michael Sagas, Department Chair and Professor, Department of Tourism, Recreation & Sport Management, University of Florida

Flagler College and the University of Florida have announced a new bridge program for undergraduate students at Flagler who may be interested in pursuing a graduate degree at UF in the area of Sport Management.
The Flagler College Sport Management Department bridge program with UF’s College of Health and Human Performance will allow students at Flagler to take up to three online graduate-level courses at UF while still enrolled at Flagler.
“This bridge program is a wonderful opportunity for students at Flagler, and a significant milestone for the college,” said Flagler President William T. Abare Jr. “A partnership with a premier institution like the University of Florida speaks volumes about Flagler’s upward trajectory.”
The bridge program will be an opportunity for students interested in a Master of Science in Sport Management degree at UF to get a jump start on the program. Courses available at UF will include Evaluation Procedures in Health and Human Performance, Management and Leadership in Sport, Sport Psychology, Performance Enhancement, Training High Performance Athletes and more.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to partner with Flagler on this innovative new bridge program,” said Dr. Michael Reid, dean of the College of Health & Human Performance at UF. “Sport Management students will simultaneously study under top-flight faculty at both Flagler and the University of Florida, a unique experience that is sure to enrich learning.”
The Sport Management major at Flagler is intended for those who desire to play a leadership role in administrative positions within the ever-growing world of sports, including professional sport at the major and minor league levels, college athletics, sport marketing and sales, event management, community and campus recreation marketing, sales, legal issues and management functions.
The Master of Science in Sport Management degree at UF reflects the latest advances in the field of sport, presenting an equally theoretical and practical approach to skills and knowledge critical to success in the industry. Through its broad but rigorous curriculum, the program helps students develop leadership abilities and administrative proficiency with an eye towards sport management.

New 3D printing method promises vastly superior medical implants for millions

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For the millions of people every year who have or need medical devices implanted, a new advancement in 3D printing technology developed at the University of Florida promises significantly quicker implantation of devices that are stronger, less expensive, more flexible and more comfortable than anything currently available.
In a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, researchers lay out the process they developed for using 3D printing and soft silicone to manufacture items that millions of patients use: ports for draining bodily fluids, implantable bands, balloons, soft catheters, slings and meshes.
Currently, such devices are molded, which could take days or weeks to create customized parts designed to fit an individual patient. The 3D printing method cuts that time to hours, potentially saving lives. What’s more, extremely small and complex devices, such as drainage tubes containing pressure-sensitive valves, simply cannot be molded in one step.
With the UF team’s new method, however, they can be printed.
“Our new material provides support for the liquid silicone as it is 3D printing, allowing us create very complex structures and even encapsulated parts out of silicone elastomer,” said lead author Christopher O’Bryan, a mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral student in UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and lead author on the paper.
It also could pave the way for new therapeutic devices that encapsulate and control the release of drugs or small molecules for guiding tissue regeneration or assisting diseased organs such as the pancreas or prostate.
The cost savings could be significant as well.
“The public is more sensitive to the high costs of medical care than ever before. Almost monthly we see major media and public outcry against high health care costs, wasteful spending in hospitals, exorbitant pharmaceutical costs,” said team member Tommy Angelini, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace. “Everybody agrees on the need to reduce costs in medicine.”
The new method was born out of a project Angelini and his team have been working on for several years: printable organs and tissues. To that end, the team made a significant discovery two years ago when it created a revolutionary way to manufacture soft materials using 3D printing and microscopic hydrogel particles as a medium.
The problem was, the previous granular gel materials were water-based, so they were incompatible with oily “inks” like silicone. It was literally a case of trying to mix oil and water.
To solve that problem, the team came up with an oily version of the microgels.
“Once we started printing oily silicone inks into the oily microgel materials, the printed parts held their shapes,” Angelini said. “We were able to achieve really excellent 3D printed silicone parts – the best I’ve seen.”
Manufacturing organs and tissues remains a primary goal, but one that likely is many years away from reality.
Not so with the medical implants.
“The reality is that we are probably decades away from the widespread implanting of 3D printed tissues and organs into patients,” Angelini said. “By contrast, inanimate medical devices are already in widespread use for implantation. Unlike the long wait we have ahead of us for other 3D bioprinting technolgies to be developed, silicone devices can be put into widespread use without technologically limited delay.”
Other members of the UF team are Tapomoy Bhattacharjee, Samuel Hart, Christopher P. Kabb, Kyle D. Schulze, Indrasena Chilakala, Brent S. Sumerlin, and Greg Sawyer.

Writer: Steve Orlando, [email protected]
Source: Tommy Angelini, [email protected]

Videos:
https://youtu.be/rQtxdw2SFAo Silicone is 3D printed into the micro-organogel support material. The printing nozzle follows a predefined trajectory, depositing liquid silicone in its wake. The liquid silicone is supported by the micro-organgel material during this printing process.
and https://youtu.be/zVQwrJe7t6k Water is pumped from one reservoir to another using a 3D printed silicone valve. The silicone valve contains two encapsulated ball valves that allow water to be pumped through the valve by squeezing the lower chamber. The silicone valve demonstrates the ability of our 3D printing method to create multiple encapsulated components in a single part — something that cannot be done with a traditional 3D printing approach.

Study: Abusing power hurts leaders, too

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Mean boss raging (Credit: UF Photography)

We know that power can corrupt, making people act in ways that harm others. But new research from the University of Florida shows that when the powerful misbehave, they hurt themselves, too.
“We always think those who have power are better off, but having power is not universally or exclusively good for the power holder,” said Trevor Foulk, who led the research as a doctoral student at UF’s Warrington College of Business and will start as an assistant professor in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business in June.
Foulk and fellow Warrington researchers Klodiana Lanaj, Min-Hsuan Tu, Amir Erez and Lindy Archambeau found that leaders who acted abusively to colleagues had trouble relaxing after work and were less likely to feel competent, respected and autonomous in the workplace. The findings, published in the Academy of Management Journal, stemmed from surveys of 116 leaders in fields including engineering, medicine, education and banking over a three-week span.
Rather than structural power – a leader’s position in the hierarchy – the study looked at psychological power, or how powerful a leader feels, which changes as they move through the workday. When leaders felt powerful, they were more likely to act abusively and perceive more incivility from their coworkers, which in turn harmed their own well-being.

Mean boss suffering (Credit: UF Photography)

“This flips the script on abusive leadership,” Foulk said. “We tend to assume that powerful people just go around and abuse and they’re totally fine with it, but the effect of power on the power holder is more complex than that.”
Side-stepping the negative effects of power might require us to rethink the qualities we look for in a leader. Foulk’s study suggests that agreeable leaders – those who value social closeness, positive relationships and workplace harmony – may be less susceptible to the misbehavior brought on by psychological power.
It’s also possible that, over time, the consequences of psychological power are self-correcting. If a leader acts abusively, then goes home and feels bad about it, he or she might come back to work the next day feeling less powerful and behave better – a phenomenon Foulk is studying for a future paper.
Although a boss who yells, curses or belittles might not seem to deserve our sympathy, “they’re suffering, too,” Foulk says. “Even though your boss may seem like a jerk, they’re reacting to a situation in a way many of us would if we were in power. It’s not necessarily that they’re monsters.”
Source: Trevor Foulk, [email protected]

Two UF faculty members elected to National Academy of Sciences

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Two University of Florida faculty members have been named to the National Academy of Sciences, bringing the total number of current and retired National Academy of Sciences members at UF to 16.
Art Hebard, a distinguished professor of physics, and Doug Soltis, a plant biologist and distinguished professor and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History at UF, are among the 84 new members and 21 foreign associates announced this morning.
Soltis’s honor comes a year after his wife, Pam, also a plant biologist and distinguished professor and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, was named to the National Academy of Sciences and just three weeks after the couple were named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“To have not one but two of our faculty members recognized with such a significant honor at the same time is remarkable. I am so pleased for UF and proud for them,” UF President Kent Fuchs said.
Hebard is known for his research on magnetism, superconductivity, and capacitance in a wide variety of new materials including thin films, graphene, fullerenes, and dilute magnetic semiconductors. He joined UF from AT&T Bell Labs in 1995 and became distinguished professor in 2007. In recent years, he has received two major awards from the American Physical Society: the 2008 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials (for the discovery of superconductivity in potassium-doped C60) and the 2015 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize (for discovery of the superconductor-insulator transition in thin films).
Soltis studies plant evolution using modern DNA approaches, including next generation sequencing methods and the use of big data sets that require challenging computational analyses. His specific interests include plant phylogeny, genome doubling (polyploidy), floral evolution, angiosperm diversification and phylogeography.
Those elected today bring the total number of active members to 2,290 and the total number of foreign associates to 475. Foreign associates are nonvoting members of the Academy, with citizenship outside the United States.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine — provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

Male jumping spiders court whomever, whenever

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Females decide who lives, dies

Male jumping spiders will try to mate with any female, but that lack of discretion could cost them their lives, says a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researcher.
In a newly published study, UF/IFAS entomologist Lisa Taylor and her team documented the courting techniques of jumping spiders. They found that male spiders spend much time and energy — including singing and dancing — trying to mate with potential females, even when these females are the wrong species.
“We think that one reason these displays have evolved in male jumping spiders is to compensate for the fact that they can’t tell females of closely related species apart,” Taylor said. “Males run around courting everything that looks remotely like a female, and they place themselves at a very high risk of cannibalism from hungry females of the wrong species who have no interest in mating with them.”

Photo by Colin Hutton

For the study, scientists searched for spiders along the shores of a river in Phoenix, Arizona. When they found one, they watched and recorded everything it did, using a voice recorder. If it was a male, they monitored how many other females he encountered, which species and whether or not he tried to court them. If it was a female, they recorded how many males and which species tried to court her.
They also documented whether males were attacked or eaten by females.
Taylor thinks that a male’s colorful courtship dance allows him to identify himself to a female from a safe distance. These displays likely allow females to tell the males of different species apart. Then females can decide what action to take while the male is still a safe distance away.
“This study provides some new insight into the age-old question of why males go to such ridiculous lengths to impress females,” Taylor said.
In jumping spiders, the answer might be that these colorful displays let males identify themselves to females without being eaten, she said.
The females of many species look a lot alike, and males don’t seem to have a good way to tell them apart. But the males of most jumping spider species look different from one another, so females make the decisions. The male strategy seems to be to court anything that looks remotely like a female and hope for the best, Taylor said.
Jumping spiders are commonly found in residential backyards, and most people don’t even know they’re there, Taylor said, much less that the male spiders are singing and dancing.
“People might be interested to know that their yard is teeming with confused, but adorable, male jumping spiders that are running around singing and dancing for every female in sight and that these males spiders are pretty clueless about how to find the right species of female,” she said.
The study is published in the online journal PLOS ONE.