Unexpected sensitivity of the highly invasive spider Mermessus trilobatus to soil disturbance in grasslands
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INVASION NOTE
Unexpected sensitivity of the highly invasive spider Mermessus trilobatus to soil disturbance in grasslands Nijat Narimanov
. Anne Kempel
. Mark van Kleunen
. Martin H. Entling
Received: 14 April 2020 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The dwarf spider Mermessus trilobatus (Araneae: Linyphiidae), native to North America, has expanded its range over large parts of Europe within less than fifty years. It is notable for occurring in a wide range of mostly agricultural habitats, while most other invasive spiders in Europe are associated with human buildings. As in other invasive invertebrates and plants, the tremendous colonisation success of Mermessus trilobatus might be related to anthropogenic habitat disturbance. Here we aim to test if the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-020-02348-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. N. Narimanov (&) M. H. Entling iES Landau, Institute for Environmental Sciences, Department of Ecosystem Analysis, University of Koblenz-Landau, 76829 Landau, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
invasion success of Mermessus trilobatus in Europe is associated with high tolerance towards soil disturbance. We sampled spiders from eight grasslands experimentally disturbed with superficial soil tillage and eight undisturbed grasslands without tillage. Opposite to our expectation, Mermessus trilobatus densities decrease sharply with soil disturbance. This is in contrast to several native species such as Oedothorax apicatus, which becomes more abundant in the fields after superficial soil tillage. Our study suggests that invasion success of Mermessus trilobatus is not connected to a ruderal strategy. The ecological and evolutionary processes behind
M. H. Entling Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Community Ecology, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
A. Kempel Institute of Plant Sciences, Department of Community Ecology, University of Bern, 3013 Bern, Switzerland M. van Kleunen Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany M. van Kleunen Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation, Taizhou University, Taizhou 318000, China
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colonisation success of Mermessus trilobatus need to be further investigated. Keywords Araneae Disturbance Habitat preference Invasibility Linyphiidae Oedothorax apicatus
native linyphiid spiders in replicated experimentally disturbed and control grassland sites, expecting that M. trilobatus abundances increase after disturbance.
Methods Field characteristics and sampling
Introduction Despite their essential role in ecosystems (Michalko et al. 2019; Nyffeler and Birkhofer 2017), invasions by spiders have only recently started to receive scientific attention (Nentwig 2015). One of the most widespread alien spider species in Europe is the North A
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