Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Biology

Reader 1

Dr. Donald McFarlane

Reader 2

Dr. Colin Robins

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2024 Julia Amoroso

Abstract

Light is of primary importance to most living organisms and most of the Earth’s natural processes. However, with rapidly expanding urbanization, humans have substantially impacted light metrics through the increase of artificial light. Artificial light pollution has been found to have a variety of behavioral and physiological effects on different organisms. However, less is understood about how light impacts community-scale interactions between different trophic levels. Here, we examined the influence of light exposure on nocturnal wolf spider (Schizocosa myccooki) foraging and interaction with red runner cockroach prey (Blatta lateralis). Of equal interest as the study developed became the relationship between predator body size and predation success. Through automated image-based tracking of predator-prey interactions, we quantified various aspects of foraging performance. In our analysis, we sought to differentiate between the effects of predator and prey size variance and the effects of light treatment. We found that, when foraging under brighter artificial light conditions, spiders saw a stunted latency to first movement but increased detection distance of prey. Body mass of spider and predator-prey body size ratio also played a role in predicting foraging behavior and success. Smaller body-size ratio was found to be correlated with a greater average velocity throughout the trial, and less likelihood of capture success. Understanding both the stunting and exploitative effects of artificial light on nocturnal foragers builds an important bridge between the effects of light pollution on individual organisms and larger, community-level effects between species and their interactions.

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