The scientific name for this spider is Loxosceles reclusa, which can be translated from Greek as “with slanted legs.” The legs of a brown recluse are long, thin, and covered in small hairs. Unlike other spiders, which typically have eight eyes, brown recluse spiders only have six, arranged in three pairs of two eyes each. This spider is brown and has a darker, violin-shaped spot on its back. It lives in midwestern and southeastern parts of the U.S. The brown recluse spider is also known as the violin or fiddle-back spider. reclusa and may be important for the survival of this species in natural habitats, as well as being beneficial to them when they are in close proximity to humans.Share on Pinterest Brown recluse spiders are highly venomous, but can only release small amounts of venom at a time. I conclude that scavenging contributes significantly to the diet of L. Insects are attracted to houses by light, food and shelter, as well as for other unknown reasons, but they can easily die there from starvation, desiccation, overexertion, pesticide exposure or other causes. In an environment such as a house, opportunists and scavengers have an advantage over more selective predators because their feeding requirements are more easily met 8. reclusa is an opportunistic feeder rather than an obligate predator or obligate scavenger, but it prefers dead over live prey. It is likely that dead prey provides an easily accessible source of nutrition without incurring the additional costs or risks associated with attacking and manipulating live prey. Spiders sometimes leave partially eaten carcasses that other spiders subsequently find and consume. reclusa (attack, retreat and feed later) means that prey may escape before it is relocated. The sequence of predatory behaviour shown by L. Capture of live prey (15.6%) was often the result of prey walking into spiders rather than of active hunting. molitor trials, spiders attacked and killed live prey but did not eat it, yet consumed prey killed by freezing. Spiders will even remain motionless and allow their prey to walk over them without attacking it, such is the extent to which they prefer dead prey. reclusa actively searches for dead prey and ignores live prey. The feeding preferences that I observed in urban habitats are consistent with my findings with captive spiders, indicating that L. All spiders consumed the prey within 24 h of its being introduced, and showed their resilience in that no obvious negative effect was manifest over the ensuing 10 months, during which a regular feeding regime was followed. germanica that had been killed 24 h earlier with Cessco-5E insecticide (0.5% pyrethrin). reclusa two weeks previously German cockroaches ( Blattella germanica) that had been dead for at least a month and B. To test the effects on the spiders of eating dead rather than live prey, I used three groups of ten spiders that had been respectively given: old dead crickets that had been envenomated and partially digested by other L. Overall, spiders chose dead prey in 84.4% of trials (χ 2 = 72, P << 0.001), indicating a clear preference for scavenging dead prey. reclusa chose dead over live waxmoth larvae ( Achroia grisella n = 59), 75.6% chose dead over live domestic crickets ( Acheta domestica n = 41) and 97.6% chose dead over live yellow mealworm larvae ( Tenebrio molitor n = 41). Spiders were kept in the dark and observed under low light every hour for evidence of prey choice, which was verified by fang penetration and feeding for 5 min or longer. The spiders were subsequently presented with equally sized live and dead prey (dead prey was killed by freezing at −80 ☌). reclusa ( n = 147) into individual plastic boxes (12 × 17 × 6 cm) and fed them a variety of prey, both dead and alive, once a week, and then starved them for two weeks. However, I witnessed the spiders locating and consuming dead prey, without prior attack, in more than 25 houses.įor the prey-choice experiments, I placed adult male and female L. reclusa in 71 homes in Kansas and did not see spiders catching live prey - indeed, the spiders actually fled from potential prey. I investigated the predatory behaviour of L.
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