Studying the behavior of Misumena vatia when offered the choice between different backgrounds will broaden our knowledge and understanding of some aspects of the life history of a key player in the ecology of New England fields. Due to its relative abundance and easy rearing in a lab setting, Misumena vatia is an optimal subject for investigating the mechanisms of crypsis and color change in spiders. This set of experiments is directed towards the spider's ability of distinguishing different colors and responding to them in order to blend in with the environment. It is important to approach the behavioral choices of this spider towards different backgrounds based on variations of the three primary colors, because we need to establish a set of parameters of color recognition before introducing new variables. Once the experiments are concluded, we will investigate if such behavioral responses have a broader implication by being correlated to flowers that its prey visits with more frequence.
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