Research has suggested an adverse effect of anxiety on cognitive functioning, and high defensive individuals may have poorer control of their anxiety than low defensive individuals. Thus, these individuals may be more likely to have a prescription for psychotropic medication. The purpose of this study was to further delineate the effects of anxiety and defensiveness on neuropsychological test performance and psychotropic medication use. Participants were 143 US veterans referred for neuropsychological evaluation. Four groups were established based on median splits on MMPI‐2 approximations of anxiety and defensiveness. Anxiety and defensiveness were unrelated to neuropsychological test performance. Defensive high anxious individuals were more likely than truly high anxious individuals to have anxiolytic and narcotic prescriptions. There was also a trend toward truly low anxious participants being more likely to be prescribed anxiolytics than repressor participants. Thus, defensiveness appears to attenuate the experience of anxiety in individuals who are low, but not high, in self‐reported anxiety.

We predicted that because plant nectar is high in energy, it is likely to provide multiple benefits to spiders that spend a substantial amount of energy foraging. In three laboratory experiments, we tested the effects of dietary extrafloral nectar on the survival, molting, and activity of two foliage wanderers, Cheiracanthium mildei L. Koch 1864 (Miturgidae) and Hibana velox (Becker 1879) (Anyphaenidae), both highly active, quick-moving nocturnal foragers. Extrafloral nectar contributed significantly to survival and molting in prey-deprived H. velox. On a marginal diet of prey (one Drosophila adult on alternate days) offered to spiders as soon as they emerged, 97% of C mildei underwent their first molt if they also received nectar, compared to 7% of controls without nectar. On a marginal diet of prey (one Drosophila adult on alternate days) offered to spiders starting two days after their emergence, 78% of the spiders also receiving nectar molted, compared to 0% of controls without nectar. Video recordings of activity showed that prey-deprived groups of C mildei maintained their active nocturnal foraging for many days on nectar, whereas controls became increasingly quiescent until they died. Non-web-building spiders that feed on nectar may utilize its energy for foraging and thereby allocate the nutrients of prey to maintenance and growth.

To study the indoor behavior of Anopheles gambiae populations in a temperate climate, we have devised a walk-in mesocosm, built within a greenhouse. The structure provides conditions more natural than laboratory cages, including sufficient room for swarming and for flight between resting sites, sugar-bearing plants, a human host, and all oviposition site. These activities impose energy demands closer to those encountered in the field. The structure also has predators. fluctuating temperatures. natural daylight, and an evening crepuscular period. Most important. its resting sites comprise a bank of tubes that call be inspected or removed individually to obtain. at regular tin-le intervals. random representative samples of an experimental population While all individuals are inactive. Samples from aging cohorts of mosquitoes, released at emergence, can yield information on behavioral sequences, male competition, reproductive success, and survival under different nutritional regimes.

Virtually all spiders sustain their survival, growth, and reproduction by eating insects and other arthropods, including other spiders. A few exceptional spiders even prey on small fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Many webmakers eat and thus recycle their webs, but this activity in itself results in no exogenous nutritional gain. At least some temperate-zone orb-weaving spiderlings, however, do enjoy a net gain by coincidentally ingesting captured pollen grains along with the web, substantially increasing the spiderlings' survival (Smith & Mommsen 1984). Web recycling and pollen grains aside, most arachnologists perceive spiders as exclusively carnivorous and as generalist predators with a taste for diverse living arthropods and even an occasional willingness to feed on dead ones (Foelix 1982, Riechert & Harp 1987, Wise 1993).