Ximena Nelson is Professor of Animal Behavior at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her work has been published in a range of scientific journals, including Biological Reviews, Animal Behaviour, Journal of Experimental Biology, and Animal Cognition.
There are an estimated 50,000 species of spider living on Earth, from behemoths like the giant huntsman and goliath birdeater, down to the tiniest, the dwarf orb weaver and Patu digua. In this extract from"The Lives of Spiders: A Natural History of the World's Spiders" , author Ximena Nelson looks at the three species with unusual diets — plants, blood and pill bugs.
Plant mutualismsAnts can be helpful to plants because they tend to be aggressive and keep herbivorous insects away. Consequently, many plants make an effort to lure ants as bodyguards and keep them around by producing accessible nectar through extrafloral nectaries. This continuous source of food is irresistible to ants, but often is also exploited by spiders, especially wandering spiders that roam to hunt their prey.
By feeding on blood-fed female Anopheles at a time of day when the mosquitoes tend to rest after a blood meal, sexually mature spiders attain a"perfume" that makes them alluring to the opposite sex. This suggests that, unusually, their prey preference may be at least partly driven by sexual selection. As a coup, E. culicivora may play a small role in mitigating the transmission of malaria by preventing mosquitoes carrying the parasite from biting and infecting another person.
Paradoxical plantsAside from houses, a popular hunting spot is on Lantana camara shrubs, where mosquitoes sometimes rest and eat nectar. The spiders also feed on Lantana’s nectar, which gives them a nutrition boost that allows them to hunt prey many times their size. Paradoxically, Evarcha’s prey preference is no longer expressed when the spider is exposed to the dominant volatile compound of Lantana, β-caryophyllene.
Species with elongated chelicerae, like D. crocata, use the pincer approach, rapidly penetrating the unprotected underside of a woodlouse with one chelicera before it can roll up and defend itself, while simply holding the armored side to keep the prey in place. If the woodlouse manages to roll into a ball or cling hard, the spider patiently waits, unmoving and ready, until it gets another chance to attack.
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