Social spiders live together in kin groups that build communal webs and cooperate in gathering prey. The following web measurements were gathered on 17 colonies of the social spider Cyrtophora citricola in Gabon (Rypstra 1979).

a. Use these data to draw a scatter plot of the relationship between the colony height aboveground (explanatory variable) and the number of spiders in the colony (response variable).

b. Examine the scatter plot and determine any impediments that might make it difficult to use linear regression to predict number of spiders in a colony from colony height.

c. In view of what you discerned in part (b), what method would you recommend to test whether colony height predicts the number of spiders?

Transcribed Image Text:

Colony 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 1010 1111 1212 1313 1414 1515 1616 1717 Height of web aboveground (cm) 9090 150150 270270 320320 180180 380380 200200 120120 240240 120120 210210 250250 140140 300300 290290 180180 280280 1717 3232 9696 195195 372372 135135 8383 3636 8585 2020 8282 9595 5959 $989 152152 6262 6464 Number of spiders