DISPERSAL OF STEGODYPHUS DUMICOLA (ARANEAE, ERESIDAE): THEY DO BALLOON AFTER ALL!

Abstract There has been some controversy about whether adult females of social Stegodyphus disperse by ballooning. Here we show that adult Stegodyphus dumicola (Eresidae) Pocock 1898 are able to gain up-lift by releasing a very large number of threads. The threads fan out widely from the spider's body and form a triangular sheet. This previously unknown ballooning mechanism, enables even large spiders to disperse over large distances.

• Publication year

  2001

• Venue

  Unknown venue

• Publication date

  2001-04-01

• Fields of study

  Biology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1636/0161-8202(2001)029[0114:DOSDAE]2.0.CO;2
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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