They are opportunistic feeders and they’ll take whatever they can subdue." Rick West, an independent arachnologist and tarantula expert not involved with the study, notes by email that "tarantula predation on vertebrates is not a common thing, but it does happen. Later, Robert Voss, a mammologist at the American Museum of Natural History, confirmed they had captured the first documentation of a large mygalomorph spider-commonly known as a tarantula-hunting and eating an opossum. "We were pretty ecstatic and shocked, and we couldn't really believe what we were seeing," Grundler says. "The opossum had already been grasped by the tarantula and was still struggling weakly at that point, but after about 30 seconds it stopped kicking,” co-author Michael Grundler, a Ph.D. The team also collected the bodies of two snakes that succumbed to centipedes, including a venomous coral snake.īut one night survey revealed a sight none of the researchers had seen before: A tarantula the size of a dinner plate preying upon a small mouse opossum. “But once in a while, we see a spider with a frog or lizard.” ( Read about fish-eating spiders.) “When we do surveys at night, some of the spiders we see will have prey, typically other invertebrates like crickets and moths.” “What stands out at night is the amount of spiders you see on all sorts of substrates-on the ground, on leaves, on branches,” says von May, whose paper appeared today in the journal Amphibian & Reptile Conservation. ( See photos of spiders that kill other spiders.) Under the cover of darkness, the forest teems with eight-legged hunters, especially ctenids, commonly known as wandering spiders. Von May and colleagues made most of their observations at night in Peru’s lowland tropical rainforests, one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. “Our knowledge of these interactions remains limited.” A novel discovery “Invertebrates preying on vertebrates is common, but it’s generally not assumed to be an important source of mortality for amphibians and reptiles,” says study leader Rudolf von May, a biologist at the University of Michigan. Though such behaviors have been recorded before, the study provides more data about just how many vertebrates fall victim to small predators, particularly spiders. ( Read about tiny spiders that devour lizards three times their size.) They captured photo and video evidence of invertebrates eating tadpoles, lizards, snakes-and even an opossum, a first-of-its-kind observation. Invertebrates such as spiders and centipedes are underappreciated kings of the jungle, eating a surprising amount of vertebrates in the Amazon, a new study says.īiologists recently documented 15 interactions in which the invertebrates are hunters and the vertebrates are prey.
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