{"id":13258,"date":"2017-12-11T16:48:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T22:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=13258"},"modified":"2017-12-11T16:52:53","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T22:52:53","slug":"arachnophobia-to-the-nth-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/12\/11\/arachnophobia-to-the-nth-degree\/","title":{"rendered":"Arachnophobia To The Nth Degree"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the academic journal The Science Of Nature<\/strong><\/em> (never heard of it before, so I’m wondering how much to trust the material),\u00a0Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer give some remarkable estimates<\/a> concerning spiders … en masse<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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Source: Spiderzrule.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Based on estimates of the average spider biomass\u00a0m\u22122<\/sup>\u00a0in various terrestrial biomes, extrapolation suggests that the total standing biomass of the global spider community equals 25.09\u00a0\u00d7\u00a01012<\/sup>\u00a0g (= 25 million metric tons fresh weight; Table\u00a01<\/a><\/span>). Biomass estimates\u00a0m\u22122<\/sup>\u00a0follow the order forests > grasslands\/shrublands > croplands, deserts, and tundra, which also reflects the order of total spider biomass per biome type worldwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The calculation of the annual prey kill by the global spider community with method I resulted in an estimate of 721\u00a0\u00d7\u00a01012<\/sup>\u00a0g\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>\u00a0(= roughly 700 million tons\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>; Table\u00a02<\/a><\/span>). To derive an estimate to which degree reduced feeding activity during rainy days would affect the global annual prey kill, we recalculated this estimate assuming that it rained during one third of the feeding season with no prey being captured on rainy days. This simple scenario still leads to a global annual prey kill of 460 million tons\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>. Estimates derived from method I therefore suggest that the annual prey kill of the global spider community may be in the range of 460\u2013700 million tons\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>. Our assessment with method II produced an estimate of the global annual prey kill of 395\u2013805\u00a0\u00d7\u00a01012<\/sup>\u00a0g\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>\u00a0(= roughly 400\u2013800 million tons\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>; Table\u00a03<\/a><\/span>). The estimates computed with the two methods are highly comparable in magnitude (Tables\u00a02<\/a><\/span>and\u00a03<\/a><\/span>). Together, the two different methods suggest that the global annual prey kill is presumably in the range of 400\u2013800 million tons\u00a0year\u22121<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To which I can only say AAUUUGH!<\/em> And, BTW:<\/p>\n

For comparison, the human world population does consume an estimated 400 million tons of meat and fish annually (Bruinsma\u00a02003<\/a><\/span>; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations\u00a02014<\/a><\/span>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some spiders do consume fish, if I remember my National Geographic reading from decades ago.<\/p>\n

I wonder how much vegetable matter we consume.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the academic journal The Science Of Nature (never heard of it before, so I’m wondering how much to trust the material),\u00a0Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer give some remarkable estimates concerning spiders … en masse: Based on estimates of the average spider biomass\u00a0m\u22122\u00a0in various terrestrial biomes, extrapolation suggests that the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13258"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13260,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13258\/revisions\/13260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}