Niche Partitioning through analysis of web orbing spiders

Introduction

A niche is defined as the role of an organism in an ecological community. The goal of this experiment was to investigate six genuses of spiders and how they have developed niche partitioning in order to survive in their community. This was done by observing and collecting data in regards to how each spider specialized in web structure, specifically radius, area, number of rows and mesh style. Further, web placement , specifically height; and orientation, specifically, whether it was a north/south or east/west web and horizontal versus vertical. My hypothesis is that the spiders will utilize niche partitioning by the placement and structure of webs. This is reasonable as it is logical that the placement of webs in various locations would result in the reduce competition for resource. This then follows that the differential structures would allow the spiders to capture different prey and again reduce competition for food.

Materials and Methods

The st...