Spider nectarivory

Abstract

Virtually all spiders sustain their survival, growth, and reproduction by eating insects and other arthropods, including other spiders. A few exceptional spiders even prey on small fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Many webmakers eat and thus recycle their webs, but this activity in itself results in no exogenous nutritional gain. At least some temperate-zone orb-weaving spiderlings, however, do enjoy a net gain by coincidentally ingesting captured pollen grains along with the web, substantially increasing the spiderlings' survival (Smith & Mommsen 1984). Web recycling and pollen grains aside, most arachnologists perceive spiders as exclusively carnivorous and as generalist predators with a taste for diverse living arthropods and even an occasional willingness to feed on dead ones (Foelix 1982, Riechert & Harp 1987, Wise 1993).