Term of Award

Fall 2008

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biology (M.S.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Biology

Committee Chair

Alan Harvey

Committee Member 1

Lance Durden

Committee Member 2

Jonathan Copeland

Abstract

Anelosimus studiosus (Theridiidae) is a subsocial spider that has a diverse arthropod fauna associated with its webs. From south Georgia, I identified 1006 arthropods representing 105 species living with A. studiosus, and 40 species that were prey items from 250 webs. The arthropods seen in A. studiosus webs represented a distinct community from the arthropods on the tree. I found that Barronopsis barrowsi (Agelenidae) and Frontinella pyramitela was similar to A. studiosus in web structure and that B. barrowsi webs contained multiple arthropods. Also, previously known as asocial, B. barrowsi demonstrated sociality in having multiple adults per web. Lastly, the inquiline communities in the webs of A.studiosus and B.barronopsis contained many different feeding guilds, including herbivores, omnivores, generalist predators, kleptoparasites, and aranievores.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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