English and Scientific Name: Spider (Araneae)
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Chelicerata
Observation: Most people think if they have a bug bite they assume it’s a mosquito bite but I’ve found that spiders can bite as well. Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every habitat with the exception of air and sea colonization. As of 2008, approximately 40,000 spider species, and 109 families have been recorded by taxonomists; however, there has been confusion within the scientific community as to how all these families should be classified, as evidenced by the over 20 different classifications that have been proposed since 1900 (wikipedia.org, 2011).Questions:
1. What do spiders eat?
2. Are spider bites dangerous?
3. How do they differ from the opiliones?
Scientific Research:
Riechert, S. and Bishop, L. Prey Control by an Assemblage of Generalist Predators: Spiders in Garden Test Systems, Ecology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Aug., 1990), pp. 1441-1450. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1938281.
What do spiders eat?
Spiders eat plant, flower and food. They don’t prefer human food however. Spiders were added to a subset of individually bagged broccoli plants that had been infested previously with known numbers of herbivorous pests. Plant damage in bags lacking spiders averaged 93.3%, whereas damage averaged 31.8% in bags to which spiders had been added (Riechert, Bishop, 1990).
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