The community structure of spiders and thier role as natural enemies in the urban ecosystem of Cleveland, OH.

Project Investigators: Caitlin Burkman and Mary Gardiner

Many urban areas experiencing economic decline, such as Cleveland, Ohio, contain large numbers of vacant lots under consideration for environmental restoration or redesign. Spiders are important natural enemies within these greenspaces and may serve as a model system for understanding how urban land use changes influence animal communities and the ecosystem services they provide. For Cleveland in particular, spiders may provide predation services crucial in urban gardening and farming, a service important for the success of growing local food and maintaining sustainable economic practices. This research will measure the composition and formation of spider communities, and their role as natural enemies, within maintained vacant lots and also those repurposed as community gardens and grasslands for biodiversity refugia. This research will test the applicability of the Modified Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis in describing the structure of spider communities, which suggests that biodiversity will be highest within intermediately disturbed habitats (vacant lots), but that guild diversity will be highest within infrequently disturbed habitats (repurposed grasslands). In this case, spider hunting guild diversity is important for assessing the ability of a greenspace to withstand extinction and maintain predation services. Spiders will be collected from each urban greenspace in order to measure species and hunting guild diversity. Additionally, analysis will include assessing the influence of both local patch and surrounding landscape variables on the formation of spider communities. Finally, molecular methods will be used to reveal the diet of an abundant wolf spider as a first step in comparisons of food webs in each habitat.