Research

I investigated the effects of miniaturization on the jumping kinematics and energetics in Australian jumping spiders. We filmed the take-off locomotory jumps of 8 species of spiders that exhibited more than 50-fold differences in body mass. I carried out a frame-by-frame analysis in the DLTdv8 app in MATLAB software and quantified their jump kinematics and energetics. While heavier spiders had higher take-off acceleration, I found that ‘species’ explained most of the variation in acceleration. Variation in the energetics and jumping forces was best explained by body mass.