Gut content analysis of common predators such as spiders using DNA metabarcoding has facilitated the understanding of community level predator-prey relationships in ecosystems. To interpret the DNA metabarcoding result correctly knowledge of different factors influencing persistence of prey DNA in the predator gut is crucial. Our study investigated four such factors; i.e., the effects of (1) starvation time prior to feeding; (2) time elapsed since feeding; (3) spider size; and (4) presence of egg sacs or spiderlings on the detection rate of prey DNA in the gut contents of field-collected Lycosidae spiders. We performed feeding trials in a controlled lab environment and analyzed predator gut content data using PCR and DNA metabarcoding techniques. We used two primer combinations (NoSpi2 with BR2 or fwhR2n) and three different prey species Drosophila hydei, Gryllus bimaculatus, and Coecobrya tenebricosa in our feeding trials. The NoSpi2-fwhR2n primer combination was more effective at amplifying a PCR product of the correct size compared to the NoSpi2-BR2 combination and was therefore used for the DNA metabarcoding. The results showed that time since feeding significantly influenced the detection rate of Drosophila and Gryllus DNA, with longer time intervals leading to decreased detection odds. Spider size, starvation time, and the presence of egg sacs or spiderlings had minimal or no influence on prey detection. This study highlights the importance of considering different factors that influence prey DNA detection in spider diet studies and using appropriate primers. Future research should account for variables such as prior gut contents, starvation period, and their potential interaction with spider metabolic rate.

Stream ecosystems are reliant on the reciprocal exchange of terrestrial and aquatic energy subsides to maintain a productive and stable food web. Land use around streams can have strong effects on the size and availability of resource subsidies for stream and riparian predators such as fish and spiders. A common forestry technique around streams is the establishment of forested buffers to protect aquatic and riparian ecosystems from upland disturbances. Buffer size may determine prey abundance, richness, and spatial extent of prey reach into both the aquatic and terrestrial systems. To test the effects of forested buffers subsidy direction, we explored the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope signatures of brown trout (Salmo trutta), Tetragnathidae and Lycosidae spiders, and their aquatic and terrestrial prey sources around twelve streams in southern Sweden. For both predator groups, buffer presence showed no effect on resource subsidy source. We found that both brown trout and spiders are significantly reliant on terrestrial sources of prey for their diets in the fall. To support the terrestrial subsidy into small streams it is vital to maintain ecologically functional riparian zones by conserving complex surrounding habitats that optimize habitat and both terrestrial and aquatic prey diversity.

Wetlands are among the most threatened habitats in the world, and so are their species, which suffer habitat loss due to climate and land use changes. Freshwater species, and especially arthropods, receive comparatively little attention in conservation plans, and the goals to stop and reverse the destruction of wetlands published 25 years ago in a manifesto by the Union of Concerned Scientists have not been reached. In this study, we investigated the occurrence and habitat requirements at two spatial scales of two species of European fishing spiders Dolomedes, which rely heavily on declining wetland habitats in Sweden and southern Norway. We collected occurrence data for Dolomedes plantarius and Dolomedes fimbriatus, using a live-determination method. We modelled the placement of nursery webs to describe fine-scale habitat requirements related to vegetation and micro-climate. Using a machine learning approach, we described the habitat features for each species and for co-occurrence sites, thus providing insight into variables relevant for the presence and detectability of Dolomedes. Nursery placement is mostly dependent on proximity to water, presence of Carex sp. (Sedges) and crossing vegetation structures, and on humidity, while detection can be affected by weather conditions. Furthermore, co-occurrence sites were more similar to D. plantarius sites than to D. fimbriatus sites, whereby surrounding forest, water type and velocity, elevation and latitude were of importance for explaining which species of Dolomedes was present. Overall, habitat requirements were narrower for D. plantarius compared to D. fimbiratus.

Dispersal abilities are important to support metapopulation functioning and species distributions, yet it is rarely accounted for in conservation. Here, we compared the propensity for dispersal between the two fishing spiders present in Europe: the widespread habitat-generalist Dolomedes fimbriatus and the scarcer red-listed Dolomedes plantarius. We experimentally tested for airborne and waterborne dispersal using first instar juveniles sampled in nursery webs, and older juveniles. We estimated the propensity for short and long-distance dispersal of airborne and waterborne behaviours, and we tested the difference between species with generalised linear mixed models. Airborne (ballooning) and waterborne (sailing) behaviours were more frequent for D. fimbriatus than for D. plantarius, indicating a higher propensity of the former for long-distance dispersal. The frequency of rappelling behaviour, and thus the propensity for short-distance dispersal, did not differ between species. However, we found contrasting results for short-distance dispersal on the water, with rowing being more frequent and running less frequent for D. plantarius than for D. fimbriatus. The different propensity for dispersal between the two species might be partly explained by the ecology of D. plantarius, which is known to be more habitat-specialist and more dependent to water bodies than D. fimbriatus. The limited propensity for dispersal of the red-listed D. plantarius is another argument for conserving an interconnected network of wetlands in Fennoscandia. Indeed, increased isolation of populations would be detrimental for species maintenance.

Retention of forested buffers around streams following forest cutting operations is a common managementtechnique used to protect aquatic resources and conserve the surrounding ecosystem services. Species richness,or α-diversity, is commonly used as an indicator of the effects of forestry management although it provides verylittle information about those effects on ecosystem processes and function. Functional diversity links speciestraits and ecosystem function incorporating species diversity, community composition, and functional guild andis more suitable to investigate the direct and indirect effects of forestry on ecosystem function. We sampledspiders and vascular plants in buffered and unbuffered stream-forest systems in southern Sweden and used atrait-based approach to assess the effects of buffer size and environmental variables on functional diversity. Weused structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the effects of buffer size and condition on spider and vascularplant diversity. We found no effect of buffer size on the functional richness or functional redundancy for spidersor vascular plants. Buffer size had a slight effect on the α-diversity of spiders within small buffers and fullyforested sites but the effect was small. Other buffer variables including canopy closure, buffer density, bareground coverage, and soil fertility had direct effects on spider and vascular plant functional diversity. The maindriver of functional richness was α-diversity, but our SEM analysis illustrated other environmental variablesworking jointly to drive functional diversity. Using a trait-based approach, we showed that forested buffers havea minimal overall impact on spider and vascular plant functional diversity. However, it is important to maintainhigh levels of α-diversity to preserve and promote both spider and plant functional richness in production forestsand we suggest that forest management conserves and encourages high levels of α-diversity to increase overallfunctional diversity.

As top consumers and generalist predators, spiders are ideal organisms to study food webs and complex ecological functions using stable isotopes. Most researchers use whole-body samples to analyze stable isotope ratios in spiders. Spiders can regrow lost legs and produce multiple molts during a life cycle, and nonlethal sampling utilizing legs and molts may provide a useful alternative to whole-body sampling especially in larger bodied or threatened species. Furthermore, removing spider abdomens and thus leftover prey in the gut contents may provide a more accurate isotopic value. We tested the hypothesis that the delta N-15, delta C-13, or delta H-2 isotopic values in spider legs are reliable proxies for spider prosomas, abdomens, or whole bodies. We used laboratory-reared large-bodied spiders (Pterinochilus murinus) and field-collected Lycosidae to compare lethal and nonlethal tissue isotopic values. We found that nonlethal samples of spider legs and molts are acceptable alternatives to lethal whole-body samples to determine delta C-13 and delta N-15 stable isotope signatures. Nonlethal samples are not suitable proxies for whole-body samples to determine delta H-2 isotopic values. Using nonlethal leg or molts samples in stable isotope investigations of spiders will allow researchers to promote conservation efforts and study threatened species while ensuring accurate and repeatable results.

Most species encounter large variations in abiotic conditions along their distribution range. The physiological responses of most terrestrial ectotherms (such as insects and spiders) to clinal gradients of climate, and in particular gradients of temperature, can be the product of both phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation. This study aimed to determine how the biogeographic position of populations and the body size of individuals set the limits of cold (freezing) resistance of Dolomedes fimbriatus. We compared D. fimbriatus to its sister species Dolomedes plantarius under harsher climatic conditions in their distribution range. Using an ad hoc design, we sampled individuals from four populations of Dolomedes fimbriatus originating from contrasting climatic areas (temperate and continental climate) and one population of the sister species D. plantarius from continental climate, and compared their supercooling ability as an indicator of cold resistance. Results for D. fimbriatus indicated that spiders from northern (continental) populations had higher cold resistance than spiders from southern (temperate) populations. Larger spiders had a lower supercooling ability in northern populations. The red-listed and rarest D. plantarius was slightly less cold tolerant than the more common D. fimbriatus, and this might be of importance in a context of climate change that could imply colder overwintering habitats in the north due to reduced snow cover protection. The lowest cold resistance might put D. plantarius at risk of extinction in the future, and this should be considered in conservation plan.

Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) have emerged as essential tools in the equipment of many ecologists, useful to explore species distributions in space and time and answering an assortment of questions related to biogeography, climate change biology and conservation biology. Historically, most SDM research concentrated on well-known organisms, especially vertebrates. In recent years, these tools are becoming increasingly important for predicting the distribution of understudied invertebrate taxa. Here, we reviewed the literature published on main terrestrial arthropod predators (ants, ground beetles and spiders) to explore some of the challenges and opportunities of species distribution modelling in mega-diverse arthropod groups. Location Global. Methods Systematic mapping of the literature and bibliometric analysis. Results Most SDM studies of animals to date have focused either on broad samples of vertebrates or on arthropod species that are charismatic (e.g. butterflies) or economically important (e.g. vectors of disease, crop pests and pollinators). We show that the use of SDMs to map the geography of terrestrial arthropod predators is a nascent phenomenon, with a near-exponential growth in the number of studies over the past ten years and still limited collaborative networks among researchers. There is a bias in studies towards charismatic species and geographical areas that hold lower levels of diversity but greater availability of data, such as Europe and North America. Conclusions Arthropods pose particular modelling challenges that add to the ones already present for vertebrates, but they should also offer opportunities for future SDM research as data and new methods are made available. To overcome data limitations, we illustrate the potential of modern data sources and new modelling approaches. We discuss areas of research where SDMs may be combined with dispersal models and increasingly available phylogenetic and functional data to understand evolutionary changes in ranges and range-limiting traits over past and contemporary time-scales.

Although functional and phylogenetic diversities are increasingly used in ecology for a variety of purposes, their relationship remains unclear, and this relationship likely differs among taxa, yet most recent studies focused on plants. We hypothesize that communities may be diverse in functional traits due to presence of: many phylogenetic lineages, trait divergence within lineages, many species and random functional variation among species, weak filtering of traits in favorable environments, or strong trait divergence in unfavorable environments. We tested these predictions for taxa showing higher (ants), or lower (spiders, ground beetles) degrees of competition and niche construction, both of which might decouple functional traits from phylogenetic position or from the environment. Studying > 11,000 individuals and 216 species from coastal heathlands, we estimated functional as minimum spanning trees using traits related to the morphology, feeding habits and dispersal, respectively. Relationships between functional and phylogenetic diversities were overall positive and strong. In ants, this relationship disappeared after accounting for taxonomic diversities and environments, whereas in beetles and spiders taxonomic diversity is related to functional diversity only via increasing phylogenetic diversity. Environmental constraints reduced functional diversity in ants, but affected functional diversity only indirectly via phylogenetic diversity (ground beetles) and taxonomic and then phylogenetic diversity (spiders and ground beetles). Results are consistent with phylogenetic conservatism in traits in spiders and ground beetles. In ants, in contrast, traits appear more phylogenetically neutral with any new species potentially representing a new trait state, tentatively suggesting that competition or niche construction might decouple phylogenetics from trait diversity.

Abstract As a key predator group, spiders have received a lot of attention by food web ecologists. The difficulty involved in studying their diet has led to the use of new technologies such as metabarcoding of gut contents. The amplification of a broad range of spider prey without amplifying spiders themselves is challenging. Until now, an efficient universal primer for this purpose was not available. We developed a novel forward primer (NoSpi2) targeting the COI gene. The primer was designed not to amplify spiders of Pardosa genus while amplifying most other invertebrates. NoSpi2 was tested together with the reverse primer BR2 in silico, in vitro on single specimens of prey and spiders, on mock and malaise trap communities, and in an ecological application. In silico evaluation predicted high primer bias for Pardosa species and more generally for spiders of the oval calamistrum clade (Lycosidae and closely related species) and low bias for other invertebrates. These results were confirmed by in vitro tests. Additionally, some spider families were not amplified contrary to our expectations. We demonstrated a high efficiency for the primer pair NoSpi2/BR2 which recovered 94% of taxa in the mock community and 85% of the taxa detected by the best invertebrate primer pair known for the malaise trap community. The field experiment showed that Lycosidae (Hygrolycosa, Pardosa, Piratula, Trochosa) DNA is not amplified by NoSpi2/BR2. It demonstrated a broad range of detectable prey species (12 orders, 67 families, 117 species). The ability of NoSpi2/BR2 primer to reliably amplify prey species, without amplifying any predator DNA, makes it an ideal choice for gut content analysis for lycosid species and related species, even enabling the homogenization of entire specimens without dissection. Given that the detected prey species included other spiders and carabid beetles, this primer could be also used to study intraguild predation.