Brace yourselves, winter is coming: the winter activity, natural diet, and prey preference of winter-active spiders on pear trees

Gajski, Domagoj; Mifková, Tamara; Košulič, Ondřej; Michálek, Ondřej; Serbina, Liliya Štarhová; Michalko, Radek; Pekár, Stano

doi:10.1007/s10340-023-01609-5

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…A higher predation intensity was found for spiders from the EPM olive grove, where the ratio between phytophagous and intraguild prey was higher compared with spiders from the IPM olive grove. Saqib et al (2022) and Gajski et al (2023) showed that the ecological type of management and the lower use of pesticides have a positive impact on the biocontrol functions of predators, which was also confirmed by this research [2,63].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Insight into Trophic Interactions of Spiders in Olive Groves with Integrated and Ecological Pest Management Using DNA Metabarcoding

Anđelić Dmitrović,

Gajski,

Kos

et al. 2023

Diversity

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Spiders act as one of the major predators among arthropods in agroecosystems and are crucial to the control of pest densities. As they are almost exclusively predators, they have developed a number of hunting strategies, which have consequently impacted their complex trophic interactions. The development of molecular biology methods for environmental DNA analysis has made it easier to analyze such complex trophic networks. In order to ascertain the trophic interactions of spiders, a sampling of spider species was carried out in two olive groves in Zadar County, Croatia, under integrated and ecological pest management. To construct the trophic networks of spiders, we performed DNA metabarcoding. The combined general and spider-excluding primers were able to recognize prey from 12 distinct orders in the guts of the 57 spiders. According to our results, spiders have a complex trophic network that exhibits seasonal and site-specific variations. The results obtained from both sites having different pest management also confirmed that spiders consumed phytophagous insects in the highest ratio, including some important pests, in comparison to other prey and that management and guild type had an impact on the predation of phytophagous insects.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Insight into Trophic Interactions of Spiders in Olive Groves with Integrated and Ecological Pest Management Using DNA Metabarcoding

Anđelić Dmitrović,

Gajski,

Kos

et al. 2023

Diversity

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“…Due to the greater imbalance in prey counts in these datasets, however, interaction frequencies were distributed across a greater number of prey, leading to less realistic network topologies and interaction weights. These 'false positive' null interac- Dietary metabarcoding data, increasingly used in null models assessing resource choice (Cuff et al, 2021;Davies et al, 2022;Evens et al, 2020;Gajski et al, 2023;Moorhouse-Gann et al, 2022;Verschut et al, 2019;Villsen et al, 2022), also present several distinct considerations. Alongside lacking the context of prey life stage, sex and other contextual information that such null models could otherwise include to assess how prey traits affect foraging, quantification of metabarcoding data is a vital concern.…”

Section: Considerations When Choosing Sampling Methods For Null Netwo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If accurately constructed, null models can elucidate the fundamental mechanisms underpinning species interactions. Null model approaches have therefore been used to explore a range of research questions including prey selectivity changes in response to perturbations (Cuff et al, 2021), seasonal variations in prey availability (Gajski et al, 2023;Verschut et al, 2019), host-parasite-parasitoid specialisation (Ramirez et al, 2022), pollinator preferences across different landscapes (G omez-Martínez et al, 2022), changes in foraging ecology corresponding with weather conditions and plant-invertebrate commensalisms (Cuff, Evans, et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of prey availability data alter interpretation of outputs from prey choice null networks

Cuff,

Tercel,

Windsor

et al. 2024

Ecological Entomology

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Null models provide a valuable baseline against which fundamental ecological hypotheses can be tested and foraging choices that cannot be explained by neutral processes or sampling biases can be highlighted. In this way, null models can advance our understanding beyond simplistic dietary descriptions to identify drivers of interactions. This method, however, requires estimates of resource availability, which are generally imperfect representations of highly dynamic systems. Optimising method selection is crucial for study design, but the precise effects of different resource availability data on the efficacy of null models are poorly understood. Using spider–prey networks as a model, we used prey abundance (suction sample) and activity density (sticky trap) data, and combinations of the two, to simulate null networks. We compared null diet composition, network properties (e.g., connectance and nestedness) and deviations of simulations from metabarcoding‐based spider dietary data to ascertain how different prey availability data alter ecological interpretation. Different sampling methods produced different null networks and inferred distinct prey selectivity. Null models based on prey abundance and combined frequency‐of‐occurrence data generated null diet compositions, which more closely resembled the diet composition determined by metabarcoding. Null models based on prey abundance, activity density and proportionally combined data generated null network properties most like the networks constructed via dietary metabarcoding. We show that survey method choice impacts all aspects of null network analyses, the precise effects varying between methods but ultimately altering ecological interpretation by increasing disparity in network properties or trophic niches between null and directly constructed networks. Merging datasets can generate more complete prey availability data but is not a panacea because it introduces different biases. The choice of method should reflect the research hypotheses and study system being investigated. Ultimately, survey methods should emulate the foraging mode of the focal predator as closely as possible, informed by the known ecology, natural history and behaviour of the predator.

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“…Dietary metabarcoding data, increasingly used in null models assessing resource choice (Cuff et al, 2021;Cuff, Tercel, Drake, Vaughan, et al, 2022;Davies et al, 2022;Evens et al, 2020;Gajski et al, 2023;Moorhouse Gann et al, 2022;Verschut et al, 2019;Villsen et al, 2022), also present several distinct considerations. Alongside lacking the context of prey life stage, sex and other contextual information that such null models could otherwise include to assess how prey traits affect foraging, quantification of metabarcoding data is a vital concern.…”

Section: Considerations When Choosing Sampling Methods For Null Netwo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If accurately constructed, null models can elucidate the fundamental mechanisms underpinning species interactions. Null model approaches have therefore been used to explore a range of research questions including prey selectivity changes in response to perturbations (Cuff et al, 2021), seasonal variations in prey availability (Gajski et al, 2023;Verschut et al, 2019), host-parasite-parasitoid specialisation (Ramirez et al, 2022), pollinator preferences across different landscapes (Gómez Martínez et al, 2022), changes in foraging ecology corresponding with weather conditions and plant-invertebrate commensalisms (Cuff, Evans, Porteous, Quiñonez, et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of prey availability data alter interpretation of outputs from prey choice null networks

Cuff,

Tercel,

Windsor

et al. 2023

Preprint

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1. Null models provide an invaluable baseline against which to test fundamental ecological hypotheses and highlight patterns in foraging choices that cannot be explained by neutral processes or sampling artefacts. In this way, null models can advance our understanding beyond simplistic dietary descriptions to identify drivers of interactions. This method, however, requires estimates of resource availability, which are generally imperfect representations of highly dynamic systems. Optimising method selection is crucial for study design, but the precise effects of different resource availability data on the efficacy of null models are poorly understood. 2. Using spider-prey networks as a model, we used prey abundance (suction sample) and activity density (sticky trap) data, and combinations of the two, to simulate null networks. We compared null diet composition, network properties (e.g., connectance and nestedness) and deviations of simulations from metabarcoding-based spider dietary data (to ascertain how different prey availability data alter ecological interpretation. 3. Different sampling methods produced different null networks and inferred distinct prey selectivity. Null networks based on prey abundance and combined frequency-of-occurrence data more closely resembled the observed diet composition, and those based on prey abundance, activity density and proportionally combined data generated network properties most like dietary metabarcoding networks. 4. We show that survey method choice impacts all aspects of null network analyses, the precise effects varying between methods but ultimately altering ecological interpretation by increasing disparity in network properties or trophic niches between null and directly constructed networks. Merging datasets can generate more complete prey availability data but is not a panacea because it introduces different biases. The choice of method should reflect the research hypotheses and study system being investigated. Ultimately, survey methods should emulate the foraging mode of the focal predator as closely as possible, informed by the known ecology, natural history and behaviour of the predator.

show abstract

Brace yourselves, winter is coming: the winter activity, natural diet, and prey preference of winter-active spiders on pear trees

Cited by 7 publications

References 73 publications

Insight into Trophic Interactions of Spiders in Olive Groves with Integrated and Ecological Pest Management Using DNA Metabarcoding

Insight into Trophic Interactions of Spiders in Olive Groves with Integrated and Ecological Pest Management Using DNA Metabarcoding

Sources of prey availability data alter interpretation of outputs from prey choice null networks

Sources of prey availability data alter interpretation of outputs from prey choice null networks

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