According to the researchers, spiders are not only important predators, but are also valuable sources of prey. Between 8, and 10, other predators, parasitoids and parasites feed exclusively on spiders, while spiders at the same time form an important part of the diet of an estimated 3, to 5, bird species.
Reference: Nyffeler, M. An estimated million tons of prey are annually killed by the global spider community, The Science of Nature. DOI About the Journal The Science of Nature. This article is more than 4 years old. A jumping spider feeds on a tree-dwelling moth caterpillar.
Read more. Topics Insects Spiders Animals Wildlife news. Dr Martin Nyffeler, the University of Basel scientist who led this study , was inspired by a book called The World of Spiders, in which a British arachnologist author William Bristowe speculated that the weight of insects killed each year by the British spider population exceeded the combined weight of the British human population.
Since he first considered that, the Swiss arachnologist spent hundreds of hours of recording spider behaviour in the field, and gathering spider ecology studies published around the world. After these four decades of data-gathering, he had enough information to work out how much the eight-legged creatures consumed.
His numbers are enough to haunt any arachnophobe; Dr Nyffeler says the entire population of the world's spiders - weighing 25 million tonnes - hunts and eats between million and million tonnes of insect prey annually. But these numbers are not meant to terrify anyone, the scientists hope their study will raise awareness of the importance of spiders in the global food web.
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