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- Title
The body size of the New Zealand orb-weaving spider Waitkera waitakerensis (Uloboridae) is directly related to temperature and affects fecundity.
- Authors
Opell, Brent D.; Berger, Andrea M.; Shaffer, Rachel S.
- Abstract
Waitkera waitakerensis occupies lowland forests of New Zealand's North Island, where temperatures decrease in a southwestward direction. The mean annual temperatures of 18 collecting sites, as extracted from GIS data, are directly related to the first femur length of adult females. Neither site elevation nor phylogeny affected spider size or other variables examined. The direct relationship between spider body size and environmental temperature followed a pattern observed in other terrestrial arthropods with a univoltine life cycle and can probably be explained by the longer growing season of warmer regions. Egg diameter was uniform across the species. Site temperature and female first femur length were each directly related to the number of eggs deposited in egg sacs. The date of egg sac collection was inversely related to egg number, suggesting that clutch size declines during the reproductive season. Females deposit eggs beneath a triangular platform and then cover them with a lower silk sheet. The area of this upper platform and the volume of the egg sac were each directly related to egg number, but not to female first femur length. The depth of the lower covering was not related to egg number or to spider first femur length. This suggests that spiders use information about the volume of eggs in their abdomens to construct an egg sac whose volume will accommodate the volume of eggs to be laid and that females do so principally by adjusting the size of the sac's upper triangular platform.
- Subjects
NEW Zealand; FORESTS &; forestry; NATURAL resources; TEMPERATURE; GEOGRAPHIC information systems; INFORMATION storage &; retrieval systems
- Publication
Invertebrate Biology, 2007, Vol 126, Issue 2, p183
- ISSN
1077-8306
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1744-7410.2007.00088.x