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Variability in food consumption rate of natural populations in the spider, Nephila clavata
Author(s) -
Miyashita Tadashi
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
population ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1438-390X
pISSN - 1438-3896
DOI - 10.1007/bf02513519
Subject(s) - spider , biology , food consumption , habitat , consumption (sociology) , ecology , body weight , natural food , food intake , zoology , food science , agricultural economics , social science , sociology , economics , endocrinology
Summary Mean daily food consumption and total lifetime food consumption of the spider, Nephila clavata , were estimated in natural populations. Daily food consumption in the late adult stage was 27–150 mg wet weight, which was nearly equivalent or slightly larger than that in other large web‐building spiders. Considerable variation in food consumption was found among habitats or years. The largest variation among habitats in the same year was 7 and 5 fold for daily and lifetime consumption, respectively, while that among years in the same habitat was 3.5 and 2.5 for daily and lifetime consumption, respectively. Feeding conditions evaluated from the food consumption per body weight of spiders declined during the period from mid‐July to mid‐September in almost all the populations, which suggested that they faced to severe food limitation in this period.