David Alber » biology http://www.davidalber.net Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:01:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Primarily-Vegetarian Spider http://www.davidalber.net/2009/11/primarily-vegetarian-spider/ http://www.davidalber.net/2009/11/primarily-vegetarian-spider/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:22:25 +0000 David Alber http://www.davidalber.net/?p=601 I have for a long time been fascinated by the symbiotic relationship between some species of acacias and ants. Honestly, I have also for a long time been fascinated by ants alone. Now some researchers have observed interesting behavior by a species of jumping spider, Bagheera kiplingi, that lives on the same acacia plants.

In many of these ant-plant relationships, the ants are provided food — called Beltian bodies — by the acacia plant. The researchers observed the spider B. kiplingi “hunting” and eating the Beltian bodies as its primary source of food, making this spider the first known to have a primarily vegetarian diet.

Read a summary of the research here. The research manuscript is at doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.049, but you will need an individual or institutional subscription to get the full text.

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