Drs. Katrien De Wolf
Terrestrial Ecology Unit
Department of Biology
Ghent University
K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35
9000 Gent Belgium
E-mail: katrien.dewolf@ugent.be
Spin City project
Spin-City is a research project funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) that aims to study how species adapt to city life. It focuses on the trophic and thermal adaptations to urbanisation in the European garden spider (Araneus diadematus) and builds on an earlier developed citizen-science initiative (www.spiderspotter.com).
Urbanisation leads to a strong homogenisation of biodiversity, as many species go extinct while few species are able to persist in cities across the world. This persistence is hypothesised to be caused by specific adaptations towards urban stressors. We focus on the most relevant stressors: urban heating and altered resources. Orb web spiders are predators that experience strong changes in prey composition but also a performance reduction due to thermal stress. Changes in body colouration are considered to be an important adaptation to thermal conditions. More specifically, we expect urban spiders to be paler and thus absorb less solar energy. This keeps them cooler than darker counterparts and could provide thermal protection in an already hot city. Since augmented pigmentation is constrained by nutritional conditions, reduced costs of producing pigments may provide an explanation for rescue under poor nutritional conditions in urban environments.
An extended survey of prey availability and nutritional quality will be executed making use of a hierarchical sampling strategy across urbanisation gradients in Flanders. Furthermore, body colouration will be quantified across urban gradients in multiple European and North American cities. To understand the adaptive value of these phenotypic changes, as well as the potential for genetic evolution, translocation experiments will be conducted. The underlying mechanisms of spider colouration will be studied as well.
The project is a collaboration between researchers of the Terrestrial Ecology Unit (TEREC) and the Evolution and optics of Nanostructures (EON) research group of the University of Ghent. Katrien De Wolf is the principle researcher (PhD student) on the project. She is assisted by Pieter Vantieghem and Ba/Ma students of the Biology department. Bram Vanthournout and Dries Bonte are the PI.