“Aggressive females are great at capturing prey,” said Jonathan N. Pruitt, an associate professor in the department of ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author on the study. “They are really good at defending the colony from intrusion by other species of spiders.”

“But they can’t really seem to turn off their aggression,” he added. “So, sometimes they mistakenly kill their young and sometimes they mistakenly maim one of their fellow colony members.”

Dr. Pruitt’s research suggests that filicidal spider colonies fare better after hurricanes.

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He and his colleagues determined that hurricanes were shifting spider behavior after surveying colonies in regions that were hit by hurricanes immediately before, immediately after and then several months after storms struck. Right after a storm, the team found no significant shift in a colony’s behavior. But when the researchers went back months later, they found that of the colonies that remained, more of them were aggressive. The researchers measured aggression by placing a piece of fluttering paper near a spider web and seeing how many female spiders emerged to attack it over a two minute period.

“The study was about spiders, but the implications are much broader than that,” said Matthew P. Ayres, a professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth College who was not involved in the study. Spiders aren’t the only animals to exhibit this kind of behavioral split where some groups are aggressive and others are more docile. C limate change is expected to increase the impact and severity of hurricanes so this effect could potentially extend to other animals.