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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jordan CuffORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Consumers are thought to select food resources based on their nutritional content. While laboratory experiments have explored this, the nutritional dynamics of invertebrate predators have been scarcely studied in the field given various methodological constraints. The intersection of these nutritional dynamics with predator traits is also poorly characterised, leading to many gaps in our understanding of how different predators forage and feed in natural systems. Here, we integrate dietary metabarcoding with prey macronutrient (protein, lipid and carbohydrate) content and abundance to assess how nutrients and predator traits (sex, life stage and taxonomy) interactively drive prey preferences in the field, using spider-prey interactions as a model system. Spider genera, sexes and life stages had nutritionally distinct diets. Our analyses demonstrated disproportionate foraging (selection and avoidance) for prey rich in different macronutrients, with the nature of these relationships differing between spider taxa, life stages and sexes. This may be explained by niche differentiation among spider groups, driven by biases toward prey rich in different nutrients, or nutrient-specific foraging in which individual spiders vary their nutritional preferences to redress deficits, although further evidence is required to confirm this. This insight into the nutritional dynamics of generalist invertebrate predators extends our understanding beyond lab-based behavioural assays and provides a novel framework for other complex real-world systems.
Author(s): Cuff JP, Tercel MPTG, Vaughan IP, Drake LE, Wilder SM, Bell JR, Müller CT, Orozco-terWengel P, Symondson WOC
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Oikos
Year: 2024
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 22/10/2024
Acceptance date: 02/09/2024
Date deposited: 24/09/2024
ISSN (print): 0030-1299
ISSN (electronic): 1600-0706
Publisher: Nordic Society Oikos. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.10712
DOI: 10.1111/oik.10712
Data Access Statement: Data are available from Zenodo: https ://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13556291 (Cuff et al. 2024c).
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