NDLI: Black widow spiders in an urban desert: Population variation in an arthropod pest across metropolitan Phoenix, AZ

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Trubl, Patricia Gburek, Theresa Miles, Lindsay Johnson, J. Chadwick
Copyright Year	2011
Abstract	The effects of urban disturbance are critical to understand, as the majority of the world’s population now resides in urban centers. For example, urbanization often leads to reduced species diversity at the expense of a few urban-adapted taxa. However, it remains unclear why some taxa thrive following human disturbance whereas others do poorly. The western black widow spider, Latrodectus hesperus, thrives in disturbed, urban habitat—often forming dense aggregations (i.e., infestations) relative to typical low-density, desert populations. We examined the population dynamics of ten black widow aggregations spread across metropolitan Phoenix, AZ, during the peak of the breeding season (June–August). Here we show that prey abundance, female mass, web volume and population density exhibit minimal temporal variation across the breeding season, but that prey abundance, female mass and population density show significant spatial variation across the ten urban aggregations. Our measure of prey abundance and foraging success, the number of prey carcasses found in black widow webs, shared a strong positive relationship with female mass and population density, but not with web volume. Surprisingly, female mass, web volume and population density were not correlated with each other. The abiotic variables we measured at each site did a poor job of explaining black widow population parameters, although we did find a marginal trend for more recent developments to harbor denser black widow aggregations. Our findings support the generalization that urbanization heightens spatial variation, and we suggest that local urban prey abundance is influential in promoting urban infestations full of heavy, fecund female black widows. Studies of the population ecology of urban pests are necessary to identify the mechanisms allowing some species to thrive following human disturbance while much native biodiversity is lost following urbanization.
Starting Page	599
Ending Page	609
Page Count	11
File Format	PDF
ISSN	10838155
Journal	Urban Ecosystems
Volume Number	15
Issue Number	3
e-ISSN	15731642
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2011-12-25
Publisher Place	Boston
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Latrodectus hesperus Urbanization Spatial variation Population dynamics Environmental Management Urban Ecology Ecology Nature Conservation
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology Urban Studies

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