Lures are deceptive strategies that exploit sensory biases in prey, usually mimicking a prey’s mate or food item. Several predators exploit plant–pollinator systems, where visual signals are an essential part of interspecific interactions. Many diurnal, and even nocturnal, orb-web spiders present conspicuous body coloration or bright color patches. These bright colors are regarded as color-based lures that exploit biases present in insect visual systems, possibly mimicking flower colors. The prey attraction hypothesis was proposed more than 20 years ago to explain orb-web spider coloration. Although most data gathered so far has corroborated the predictions of the prey attraction hypothesis, there are several studies that refute these predictions. We conducted a multilevel phylogenetic meta-analysis to assess the magnitude of the effect of conspicuous orb-web spider body coloration on prey attraction. We found a positive effect in favor of the prey attraction hypothesis; however, there was substantial heterogeneity between studies. Experimental designs comparing conspicuous spiders to painted spiders or empty webs did not explain between-studies heterogeneity. The lack of theoretical explanation behind the prey attraction hypothesis makes it challenging to address which components influence prey attraction. Future studies could evaluate whether color is part of a multicomponent signal and test alternative hypotheses for the evolution of spider colors, such as predator avoidance and thermoregulation.
Perceive and understand the factors that determine and regulate the diversity of species is one of the central questions in ecology. Standards and processes are poorly documented for the bottom-up effect, for which we can mention two main hypotheses about the factors that would be regulating species diversity: (1) hypothesis of taxonomic diversity and (2) hypothesis of structural heterogeneity. The hypothesis of structural heterogeneity has been gaining attention in many studies with different taxonomic groups and environments, such as the invertebrate response to vegetation structure, and between groups of organisms more susceptible to the effects of habitat architecture are arthropods. The vegetation is an element that provides the habitat structural complexity, because can represent a whole plant habitat, and small variatio ns in its architecture can have consequences in the community structure and foraging efficie nc y, for example, Spiders. Plants harboring different composition of spider guilds and these differences may be due to the variables related to the architecture of these habitats, because the hunting strategies adopted by different guilds of spiders has a strong relationship with the vegetation structure. Since the importance of vegetation structure in the composition of the assembly of spiders, especially as the hunting strategies adopted by these, this study evaluated the relationship between aspects of the structure of arboreal branches, leaf density branch, leaf area, nodal distance with composition of the board of spiders, taking into account their classification into guilds. There was also a comparison of these architectural measures between points collected in the cerrado sensu stricto and gallery forest, as well as comparing the results of correlations between variables architecture and composition of meetings for each of the two forest types. The objective was to understand the relationship of tree branches architecture with the assembly of spiders. The study was conducted at Fazenda Água Limpa and the Parque Estadual da Serra de Caldas Novas. The vegetation types sampled outside the gallery forest and the cerrado sensu stricto and the collection technique was the umbrella-entomological with a square meter. In total, we sampled 182 points in 84 gallery forest and 98 in cerrado sensu stricto. Spiders were collected in 1512 in total, of which the most abundant families were Anyphaenidae, Salticidae and Theridiidae, the first two belonging to the guild runners hunting spiders (CO) and the third the guild of builders irregular webs (IT). Of this total, 10.52% were adults and individuals were identified in kind, Thwaitesia affinis being the most abundant species. No species was common to two forest types. The results of the Analyzes Redundancy showed correlations between the web construction of guilds and the distance between the nodes of the leaves, suggesting that cobwebs need more space for building them, and correlation between hunting spiders runners and the density index leaf, in...
We compared abundance and richness of mites on Miconia albicans (Sw.) Steud. (Melastomataceae) found in Cerrado grassland (CGR) and in Cerrado sensu stricto (CSS), in order to evaluate the effect of plant physiognomy on mite assemblage structure, in the Parque Nacional das Emas, Goiás State, Brazil, a biological reserve of Cerrado biome. In total, 453 mites of 45 species belonging to 14 families were collected. Stigmaeidae was the most abundant predatory mite family, represented by a single unidentified Agistemus species. Among phytophagous mites, species of Lorryia (Tydeidae) were the most common. Lorryia turrialbensis Baker, 1968 is reported for the first time on a Cerrado plant species. We concluded that the Cerrado phytophysiognomy can determine the organization of mite assemblages since CSS sheltered higher species richness and abundance of mites on M. albicans due to has more habitat complexity, species richness and abundance of plants than CGR. Therefore, CSS can provide more food resources, microhabitats for shelter and oviposition favoring the occurrence and populational development of plant mites.
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