Pattern of co-occurrence between ant-mimicking jumping spiders and sympatric ants in a bornean tropical rainforest

To evaluate the pattern of co-occurrence between ant-mimicking jumping spiders and sympatric ants in a tropical rainforest, we sampled these arthropods and also non-mimicking jumping spiders by net-sweeping from the understory vegetation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. We collected the spiders and ants from a total of 594 sample points, with ants occurring in 445 points (79.4%), non-mimicking jumping spiders in 308 (51.9%), Agorius ant-mimicking spiders in 40 (6.7%), and Myrmarachne ant-mimicking spiders in 59 (9.9%). Frequencies of occurrence of non-mimicking jumping spiders showed no significant difference in relation to ant-occurrence, whereas both of the ant-mimicking spider genera occurred significantly more frequently with ants. Agorius spiders co-occurred with a wider variety of different ant genera, compared to Myrmarachne, but logistic regression analyses and a null model test showed no specific associations between Agorius spiders and the sympatric ant genera. The mimetic resemblances of Agorius spiders are considered to be much less ant-like than those of Myrmarachne spiders, because their constriction of the cephalothorax is not as obvious as in Myrmarachne. These data provide support for the multi-model hypothesis (Edmunds 2000), which predicted that a poor ant-mimic should occur in ranges of many different ants, compared to good ant-mimic.