She completed her master s degree at U of T at Mississauga and it s there that the black widow spiders first piqued her interest. Theory predicts that under some circumstances males might be selected to sacrifice themselves. This is the most extreme test of mating system theory in some ways, she explained. So I was searching for a system where that might be happening to see whether it was an adaptive behaviour for the males and what types of factors had led males to be forced into this type of mating strategy. From a layperson s point of view, one would think that the individual survival instinct would override the species need to reproduce.
Theory says that reproduction is what s driving the evolution of adaptive traits.
So what you re being selected to do is develop traits that maximize your lifetime reproductive success. And that s the case here. At this point, it s not known if male complicity in their sexual cannibalism is limited to the black widow species. It may be that others just haven t been discovered yet, she suggested. However, it is known that other insects and animals do engage in full investment in reproduction, if not sexual cannibalism.