Despite Australia’s reputation for large, unique spiders, very little is known about the behaviour of many of these species. Wolf spiders (Family: Lycosidae) are active hunters and actively impact invertebrate populations. These spiders have relatively well documented multimodal (visual and seismic) courtship behaviours, which has had both ecological and phylogenetic applications in the northern hemisphere. There have been no equivalent studies on the behaviour of Australian wolf spiders. This project aims to document and compare courtship behaviour of Australian riparian species, with a particular focus on Artoria albopedipalpis, A. mckayi, Venatrix amnicola and V. lapidosa).
