The influence of season, hunting mode, and habitat specialization on riparian spiders as key predators in the aquatic-terrestrial linkage.

ABSTRACT: Freshwater ecosystems subsidize riparian zones with high-quality nutrients via the emergence of aquatic insects. Spiders are dominant consumers of these insect subsidies. However, little is known about the variation of aquatic insect consumption across spiders of different hunting modes, habitat specializations, seasons, and systems. To explore this, we assembled a large stable isotope dataset (n > 1000) of aquatic versus terrestrial sources and six spider species over four points in time adjacent to a lotic and a lentic system. The spiders represent three hunting modes each consisting of a wetland specialist and a habitat generalist. We expected that specialists would feed more on aquatic prey than their generalist counterparts. Mixing models showed that spiders' diet consisted of 17-99%

SUBMITTER: Bollinger E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10746743 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature