Collaborative Research: Social Predators and the Parallel Evolution of Weapon Complexity: Venom Toxins and Microbial Arsenals

About This Grant

PUBLIC ABSTRACT This project will reveal how venom complexity has evolved in association with sociality in spiders. The evolution of sociality is associated with a redistribution of efforts among group-mates to accomplish collective tasks. However, how social groups of predators optimize the distribution of weaponry used to subdue prey remains unknown. Venomous predatory spiders represent a powerful system to address this gap in knowledge because both social and solitary spiders use venom for defense and prey capture. This project explores how venom – a critical tool for defense and hunting – is shaped not only by an animal’s biology, but also by the microbes (the “microbiome”) that live within it. Researchers will study how venom composition, including both toxins and microbial communities, has changed across multiple independent origins of social living in spiders. By comparing venom traits in social spiders and their solitary relatives, the team will examine whether social living drives changes in venom that help divide labor among individuals. This work is significant because it brings together tools from evolutionary biology, toxinology, and microbiome science to ask how cooperation in nature evolves, and if this evolution is repeatable. It also has real-world relevance in that spider venom and venom microbes may hold clues for developing new natural products or medicines, including treatments for chronic pain and infections. The researchers will share their discoveries, as well as educational resources for inspiring students to apply the scientific method to both basic and applied research questions, with students from local communities in both Florida and Puerto Rico. This research investigates how venom complexity – defined here as the combined diversity of venom toxins and venom-associated microbial communities – has evolved in association with three independent origins of sociality in spiders. Using complementary multi-omics techniques, the research team will quantify two components of venom composition, toxin diversity and venom microbial community diversity, to assess within- and between-species differences in venom complexity. Three research objectives will be addressed: the team will (1) determine differences in venom toxin composition between social and solitary predators, (2) identify differences in venom microbiomes between social and solitary predators, and (3) establish the degree to which individual venom composition coincides with behavioral task differentiation. This proposal expands the traditional view of venom evolution to encompass the functional role of venom-associated microbes across multiple scales: from individuals to social groups to populations to species. Using Stegodyphus social spiders as a test system allows us to address the parallel evolution of two key innovations (sociality and venom use) across multiple origins of sociality. Few systems exist in which these key innovations are genetically tractable, allowing for the mapping of precise mutational pathways and revealing underlying microevolutionary processes. From a biotechnology perspective, venom peptides provide a large untapped potential for therapeutic discoveries, including treatments for chronic pain and parasite infection. Characterization of the venom microbiome has high potential to yield novel taxa of biomedical importance because this microbial community inhabits venom-gland environments known for their antimicrobial properties. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.