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A spider is a member of the order Araneae, one of many orders within the class arachnida, meaning it has a body consisting of two segments, a cephalothorax and an abdomen, as well as eight legs. All spiders are predators that feed off insects, and some larger species have been known to catch small reptiles, birds, and amphibians (Levi and Levi ...
Now, however, it appears that non-orb spiders are a subgroup that evolved from orb-web spiders, and non-orb spiders have over 40% more species and are four times as abundant as orb-web spiders. Their greater success may be because sphecid wasps, which are often the dominant predators of spiders, much prefer to attack spiders that have flat webs ...
The main predators of fishing spiders are birds and snakes. Dragonflies have also been observed catching young spiders. Species parasitic on the spiders include a wasp of the Pompilidae family, commonly called the Spider Wasp, [8] that stings the spider to paralyze it before carrying it off and laying an egg in its abdomen. The larvae of the ...
The blue mud dauber species, Chalybion californicum, is a wasp that, in western North America, is the primary predator of black widow spiders. [ 21 ] The ultimate tensile strength and other physical properties of Latrodectus hesperus (western black widow) silk are similar to the properties of silk from orb-weaving spiders that had been tested ...
Jumping spiders are a group of spiders that constitute the family Salticidae. As of 2019 [update] , this family contained over 600 described genera and over 6,000 described species , [ 1 ] making it the largest family of spiders – comprising 13% of spider species. [ 2 ]
Fossil evidence shows that the orb web was in existence at this time, which permitted a concurrent radiation of the spider predators along with their insect prey. [12] [13] The capacity of orb–webs to absorb the impact of flying prey led orbicularian spiders to become the dominant predators of aerial insects in many ecosystems. [14]
Almost all known spider species are predators, mostly preying on insects and on other spiders, although a few species also take vertebrates such as frogs, lizards, fish, and even birds and bats. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Spiders' guts are too narrow to take solids, and they liquidize their food by flooding it with digestive enzymes and grinding it with ...
Wandering spiders are known to hunt large prey, for example hylid species Dendropsophus branneri. [3] Despite their notoriety for being dangerous, only a few members of Phoneutria have venom known to be hazardous to humans, but the venoms of this family are poorly known, [ 4 ] so all larger ctenids should be treated with caution.