Brightness discrimination in the day- and night-adapted hunting spider Cupiennius salei

Cupiennius salei is a nocturnal spider with eight eyes, which undergo a remarkable circadian cycle: the rhabdomeric membrane of the photoreceptor cells is dismantled during the day and rebuilt at the beginning of the night. Such drastic changes might influence the brightness discrimination ability. We tested this hypothesis by presenting square-shaped flickering stimuli with certain luminances on stationary backgrounds with other luminances to spiders with day- or night-adapted eyes. When the spider, through its three pairs of so-called secondary eyes, perceives a visible contrast between the stimulus and the background, its principal eye muscle activity should increase. We therefore recorded this activity in vivo to assess the brightness discrimination ability of Cupiennius salei. Our results show that this spider has good brightness discrimination ability, which is significantly better with dark-adapted eyes. A Michelson contrast of 0.1 to 0.2 at night, and of 0.2 to 0.3 for day-adapted eyes, is sufficient to elicit a significant response, except below a critical value of luminance (~16 cd m(-2)), where the minimal perceivable contrast needs to be higher. In the Discussion we compare these performances with those of other animals, in particular with jumping spiders.