Research In the Spider Lab
Background:
Listen to the original TV version of the Spider man song!
Spiders on Drugs
Most research on sublethal effects of pesticides has concentrated on economically-important arthropods and vertebrate species. Although previous studies have investigated the lethal effects of pesticides on spiders, few have documented the sublethal effects on spider behavior. This is surprising, given the likely importance of spiders as insect predators and control agents.
Programs
You can download many of the programs I developed for this research here. Also, visit this site for Palm OS programs related to general behavioral ecology.
Purpose of Investigations:
- Develop methods for dosing spiders under laboratory conditions.
- Develop assays to record changes in behavior for a variety of spider species from different guilds (orb weavers, tangle-web weavers, non-web-weaving spiders).
- Record changes in behavior of spiders and determine if spiders recover from sublethal effects.
- Compile a "directory "of behaviors, spider species, and methods related to the effects of pesticides on spider behavior.
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