Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303110216
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
RU'S SPIDER MEN
Fred Singer hasn't always looked for that special quality that female spiders desired in a mate.In college, he was more interested in the mating habits of dragon flies.
It wasn't until four or five years ago that he began his love affair with the Agelenopsis aperta, better known as the funnel web spider.
Hongfa Xu, a scientist from Shanghai, started spending time with the spider even more recently. In the past, his lab hours have been devoted to the musk deer and civet cat, which isn't really cat-like at all. It's more like a mongoose.
The two scientists met several years ago at an international ethological conference in Japan. They teamed up at Radford University this year. And together, in the basement of Reed-Curie Hall, they are studying some 140 spiders.
Xu and Singer believe that if scientists can understand one animal - insect or arachnid - they might be able to understand others.
The civet, Xu explains, uses a sound or calling when seeking out a mate.
He demonstrates: "Da ta ta ta ta tat. It's a special sound."
Spiders use vibrations to signal the females.
"It's essentially the same thing," Singer said. "Just a different mode of communication."
The research is easy for students to take part in and learn from. And it does have its applications.
"It helps us understand the evolution of behavior," Singer said. "Darwinian fitness. How well we get along in the natural world."
In its native habitat - Western states like New Mexico and Texas - the male funnel web spider eats for the first 95 percent of his life. Near the end, he leaves the web, stops eating, and searches for sex.
The female spider stays put, waiting for the males to come calling. She may reject several before picking her mate.
Singer and Xu are studying what makes the courtships successful.
Singer has ruled out appearance - he once saw a three-legged spider find two mates during a field experiment.
"Fairly large males seem to do well," he said. "And the very large ones don't do as well. They don't live as long."
The scientists' newest project monitors the web vibrations that spiders make during fighting or courting procedures.
Peter Kugler, an eminent scholar in computer science, helped set up the equipment to monitor the vibrations.
He attached speakers and some special electric film to a couple of empty buckets that once contained doughnut glaze. A web, in the middle of each bucket, is connected to small wires and a gauge that monitors the vibrations.
About 10 people are involved in the study of "what those wiggles and jiggles actually mean," Singer said.
It is a sensitive operation. Xu and Singer sit in their lab in silence. Voices would register on the equipment that is supposed to monitor the vibrations of the web.
They are upset when a car has the audacity to park right outside the lab window, and they had to knock off early this week when a jackhammer outside kept messing up their data.
During their lab time, the scientists and students use a list to help label behaviors.
A raised leg. A bite to the web. Poke, jab, contact.
It sounds like a sparring match and sometimes it is. In plastic spider condos, Singer can have as many as 40 territorial battles going at the same time or 40 love nests.
"I like working with silly stuff," Singer said.
Singer collected the spiders last year in New Mexico and raised them to brown, striped critters a little larger than a quarter. They have a venom that makes insects quake.
But the bite doesn't go through human skin, making the scientists relatively safe. Still, when Xu tries to get one of them back into its cage, he uses a vial and a long pointer, not his hands.
Radford University is not known as a research college, though more professors take on projects each year.
During the first six months of this academic year, 15 professors applied for research grants totalling $2.4 million. Five years ago, there were 13 grant proposals totaling only $250,000 for the entire academic year.
But teaching remains a top priority. Singer teaches three classes each semester and spends his spare time in his lab, an arachnophobic nightmare
In various corners of the room, more than 100 spiders are caged in small compartments, ready to go under the camera lens.
On top of a filing cabinet, thousands of fruit flies are growing and multiplying, a spidery Sunday night dinner.
A note on Singer's desk says that his two-week supply of live crickets is waiting at the post office.
"Spiders won't have a thing to do with dead meat," he said.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***