ANIMALS - South American spider females pick their mates according to how well the nuptial gift is wrapped

It's not only what's inside the nuptial gift that a potential suitor brings to a female Paratrechalea ornata spider that counts. It's the whole package, white silk wrappings and all, that can give one male spider the edge over another. So say Mariana Trillo, Valentina Melo-González and María José Albo of the Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable in Uruguay, who carried out the first study to look at the role of silk wrappings d ...

http://phys.org/news/2014-02-south-american-spider-females-nuptial.htm