Website Choice Research Articles

Habitat Selection and the Life History of a Desert Spider, Stegodyphus lineatus (Eresidae)

We examined the habitat selection of a Negev desert web-building spider Stegodyphus lineatus in two adjacent habitats differing in vegetation structure and prey availability. We investigated the choice of web-sites by spiders in terms of both vegetation structure and expected availability of prey. Spiders built their webs preferentially in shrubs with dense branch architecture and chose the parts of shrubs with greatest potential availability of prey. We conducted food-supplementation experiments to determine the effects of food supply on time to reproduction and number of offspring produced. Spiders in the habitat with greater prey availability and more abundant annual vegetation grew larger and reproduced earlier