| Cantuaria borealis | |
|---|---|
 | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Chelicerata |
| Class: | Arachnida |
| Order: | Araneae |
| Infraorder: | Mygalomorphae |
| Family: | Idiopidae |
| Genus: | Cantuaria |
| Species: | C. borealis |
| Binomial name | |
| Cantuaria borealis Simon, 1982 | |
Cantuaria borealis is a native New Zealand species of trapdoor spider.
Cantuaria borealis are large, stocky spiders that range in colour of various shades of brown, ranging from orange, red and yellow, to olive and purple tones. Cantuaria borealis have eight eyes, located in the centre of their head, and they can be arranged in either two or three rows. Their body size ranges from 8-33mm. Cantuaria borealis are sexually dimorphic, with the male spiders looking very similar to the female spiders until their last moult, where they emerge darker in colour and stockier in size. Male spiders have an obvious palpal organ, and female spiders have internal genitalia. [1]
Cantuaria species are located in African and Asian continents including places such as, Madagascar, India, South east Asia and south and central America. [2]
Cantuaria borealis are located throughout the south island of New Zealand, with concentrations being found in Canterbury, the Banks Peninsula and the West Coast region. Due to limited migration techniques, each separate population of the spider tends to be a different species as they only walk up to a few meters before creating their own burrow. [3]
Cantuaria borealis display habitat selection modelling other idiopid as they occupy a fossorial niche. A fossorial niche refers to an organism that lives most of its life underground, emerging only to mate, migrate or strike prey. [4] Burrows are dug 30–40 cm deep [5] with the deepest burrow recorded at 49 cm. [1]
Cantuaria borealis mature slowly and have a long life cycle, with the females living up to 20 years. Few eggs are laid each year, and a closely related Cantuaria species (Cantuaria huttoni) was found to have only 18-20 eggs in the egg sac. Offspring could not independently manoeuvre until they were around one month old. [3] The female parent invests between 6–18 months to raise the offspring until they are mature enough to build their own burrows. [1] As mentioned earlier, the Cantuaria borealis species are fossorial, cluster forming spiders, meaning that they build their burrows in close proximity to one another. Male spiders become vagrant, and leave their burrows to look for a female mate during autumn and winter months. [1] Females rarely ever leave their burrows and live their whole life cycle underground, [3] making the burrow wider and longer as they grow.
Cantuaria borealis are carnivorous and eat invertebrates including beetles and snails. They have adapted an efficient technique to hunt snails. Just before the snail retreats into its protective shell, the spider pierces the snails soft tissue, preventing it from retreating. After a while, the snail gets fatigued and can no longer resist the spiders grasp and eventually gets digested. Cantuaria borealis, like other spiders, eat only liquid food. The spider traps its prey, and injects its saliva in to the organism. The saliva contains enzymes that liquify the tissue, and the spider then pumps the liquid in to its body, using its muscular abdomen. Hard parts that are undigestible, are either dropped into the burrow to rest in the mittle, or tossed out the trapdoor onto the ground surface. [6] Cantuaria borealis have been observed to trap only live food, with little interest being shown in dead invertebrates that it would usually eat. Trapdoor spiders in New Zealand do not have silk trip lines, but instead sense the vibrations of the prey outside the trapdoor. The spiders have been observed, perching just behind the trap door, ready to strike. Occasionally the spider will leave the burrow completely to chase the prey, however this wasn’t the preferred behaviour. [1]
Common predators of Cantuaria borealis are bird, rodents and reptiles, and they are potential hosts for parasites, nematodes and fungi. [3] Another common predator is the Priochemis (Trichocuryus) monachus also known as New Zealand’s largest pompilid wasp. The wasp hunts the spider to feed to its larva and will prey on juvenile and adult spiders. The wasp stalks the spider until the spider engages. Once spider has engaged with the wasp, the wasp will sting the spider, paralysing it. The spider is then dragged back to the wasps nest where the larva eat the spider, waiting until the end to eat its vital organs and essentially killing the spider. The spider is mainly targeted for its large size and when it is in the open its vulnerability. [7]
Cantuaria borealis are parasitised by Aranimermis gigunteus, [8] which is a nematode, from the mermithid family. Aranimermis gigunteus lives inside female Cantuaria borealis, and no nematodes were found in male spiders. This is thought to be because they require a stable environment, which is found within the female spiders who do not leave their burrow throughout their life cycle, of around 20 years. It is also understood that Aranimermis gigunteus has a long life cycle, and it cannot complete this cycle within the male spiders lifetime of 1–3 years. Almost all female spiders were infected and having more than one parasite was common. In spiders with only one parasite, the sex of the nematode was always female, and for spiders with more than two, the gender was always male. Seven nematodes was the most nematodes found within one spider. These Aranimermis gigunteus parasites have been shown to be parasitized themselves, with cysts thought to be caused by a sporozoan protozoan parasite. [8]
Trapdoor spiders, particularly Cantuaria borealis species have been used for pest control in grasslands as they are effective predators of large invertebrates. The value of trapdoor spiders on farmland has been recognised before, and it has been noted that paddocks that had trapdoors, has less issues with grass grub. [1]
Parasitism is a symbiotic relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism, trophically transmitted parasitism, vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation.
Ctenizidae is a small family of mygalomorph spiders that construct burrows with a cork-like trapdoor made of soil, vegetation, and silk. They may be called trapdoor spiders, as are similar species, such as those of the families Liphistiidae, Barychelidae, and Cyrtaucheniidae, and some species in the Idiopidae and Nemesiidae. In 2018, the family Halonoproctidae was split off from the Ctenizidae, leaving only three genera; later, the genus Stasimopus was removed. The family now consists of only two genera and five species.
A tarantula hawk is a spider wasp (Pompilidae) that preys on tarantulas. Tarantula hawks belong to any of the many species in the genera Pepsis and Hemipepsis. They are one of the largest parasitoid wasps, using their sting to paralyze their prey before dragging it to a brood nest as living food; a single egg is laid on the prey, hatching to a larva which eats the still-living prey.
Wasps in the family Pompilidae are commonly called spider wasps, spider-hunting wasps, or pompilid wasps. The family is cosmopolitan, with some 5,000 species in six subfamilies. Nearly all species are solitary, and most capture and paralyze prey, though members of the subfamily Ceropalinae are kleptoparasites of other pompilids, or ectoparasitoids of living spiders.
Nephila is a genus of araneomorph spiders noted for the impressive webs they weave. Nephila consists of numerous species found in warmer regions around the world. They are commonly called golden silk orb-weavers, golden orb-weavers, giant wood spiders, or banana spiders.
Idiosoma is a genus of Australian armored trapdoor spiders that was first described by Anton Ausserer in 1871. Originally placed with the Ctenizidae, it was moved to the armored trapdoor spiders in 1985. The name is derived from the Greek ἴδιος (idios), meaning "individual, unique", and σῶμα (soma), meaning "body", referring to the distinctive structure of the abdomen.
Idiosoma nigrum, also called black rugose trapdoor spider, occurs only in south-western Australia, in dry woodlands east of the Darling Scarp and north to Moore River.
Spider behavior refers to the range of behaviors and activities performed by spiders. Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms which is reflected in their large diversity of behavior.
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, both in ancient and in recent times.
Porrhothele antipodiana, the black tunnelweb spider, is a spider found throughout much of New Zealand and the Chatham Islands in bush and gardens and is one of New Zealand's most researched spiders. It is related to tarantulas, and is a harmless relative of the venomous Australian funnel-web spider.
Philanthus gibbosus, which is commonly referred to as a beewolf due to its predation practices, is a species of bee-hunting wasp and is the most common and widespread member of the genus in North America. P. gibbosus is of the order Hymenoptera and the genus Philanthus. It is native to the Midwestern United States and the western Appalachians. P. gibbosus are often observed to visit flowers and other plants in search of insect prey to feed their young. The prey that P. gibbosus catches is then coated in a layer of pollen and fed to the young wasps.
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as their common ancestor is shared by bees and ants. Many wasps, those in the clade Aculeata, can sting their insect prey.
Hexathele hochstetteri, commonly known as the banded tunnelweb spider, is a spider in the family Hexathelidae, found only in New Zealand. It is common on the North Island, and uncommon on the South Island.
Phidippus clarus is a species of jumping spider found in old fields throughout eastern North America. It often waits upside down near the top of a plant, which may be useful for detecting prey, and then quickly jumps down before the prey can escape. The spider is one of 60 species in the genus Phidippus, and one of about 5,000 in the Salticidae, a family that accounts for about 10% of all spider species. P. clarus is a predator, mostly consuming insects, other spiders, and other terrestrial arthropods.
Priocnemis monachus is a large spider wasp from New Zealand where it is known as the "black hunting wasp". It is the largest pompilid in New Zealand.
Behavior-altering parasites are parasites with two or more hosts, capable of causing changes in the behavior of one of their hosts to enhance their transmission, sometimes directly affecting the hosts' decision-making and behavior control mechanisms. They do this by making the intermediate host, where they may reproduce asexually, more likely to be eaten by a predator at a higher trophic level which becomes the definitive host where the parasite reproduces sexually; the mechanism is therefore sometimes called parasite increased trophic facilitation or parasite increased trophic transmission. Examples can be found in bacteria, protozoa, viruses, and animals. Parasites may also alter the host behaviour to increase the protection to the parasites or their offspring. The term bodyguard manipulation is used for such mechanisms.
Cantuaria dendyi is a species of trapdoor spider in the family Idiopidae. It can be found in the South Island of New Zealand and is limited to the Christchurch and Banks Peninsula area.
Pison spinolae, commonly known as mason wasp, is a solitary wasp of the family Crabronidae, found throughout New Zealand.
Contracaecum is genus of parasitic nematodes from the family Anisakidae. These nematodes are parasites of warm-blooded, fish eating animals, i.e. mammals and birds, as sexually mature adults. The eggs and the successive stages of their larvae use invertebrates and increasing size classes of fishes as intermediate hosts. It is the only genus in the family Anisakidae which can infect terrestrial, marine and freshwater animals.
Schizocosa stridulans is a sibling species of S. ocreata and S. rovneri and is part of the wolf spider family. The name of the genus comes from the epigynum structure being lycosid and having a split T excavation. This spider is well-known for its specific leg ornamentation and courtship rituals and that is how it has been differentiated from its related species. The S. stridulans take systematic steps during its courtship ritual, which involves two independent signals. More specifically, female spiders will leave silk and pheromones to communicate that they are ready to mate.