Mosquitoes provide blood to spiders

Scientists in Sydney, Australia, have announced they have identified the jumping East Spider species that prefers to hunt as bloody female mosquitoes.

And researchers at Macquarie University say that this is a rare demonstration of an animal of choice to hunt prey based on what the prey has eaten.

The spider species is called Evarcha cullicivora , a mosquito-catching spider, living near Lake Victoria in Kenya and Uganda. Like other spiders, these spiders lack specialized body parts and suction nozzles to suck blood, so they cannot take blood directly from animal bodies.

Ximena Nelson and her colleagues studied the spider species Evarcha cullicivora and found that the spiders often choose female mosquitoes that are full of blood. They prefer the ladles rather than hunting other prey such as foxes, male mosquitoes and bile-sucking mosquitoes.

Researchers say these spiders discover their prey by sight or smell. The determination of prey by these senses is due to innate rather than previous experiences or from the ability of the prey. Further studies show that blood meal is very biologically important for E.culicivora spiders.

(Science & Nature)