Your home is your sanctuary 鈥� except when you are a tree frog and a nice-looking retreat contains a huntsman spider looking to make a meal of you. These spiders have now been seen making traps out of leaves the frogs tend to hide in.
Researchers ran across this behaviour for the first time while doing wildlife surveys in vanilla plantations in north-east Madagascar in 2017. While surveying birds, Dominic Martin at the University of Goettingen in Germany noticed a huntsman spider (Damastes sp.) feasting on a tree frog (Heterixalus andrakata).
鈥淭he spider had grabbed the frog and was starting to suck out the body of the frog,鈥� he says. The researchers聽 haven鈥檛 confirmed the spider species yet, but are working on identifying a specimen.
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His colleague Thio Fulgence at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, who was surveying reptiles and amphibians in the plantations, noticed that the spider was sitting between two leaves it had stitched together with its silk to form a type of envelope. Martin took photos of the spider eating the frog (pictured), as they had never seen anything like this before.
In the following weeks, Fulgence found three other instances of leaves sewn together with silk, with huntsman spiders waiting at the back, although the team only observed one case of a spider eating a frog.
The researchers believe these spiders, which may even be an undescribed species, build what looks like the perfect daytime retreat for Heterixalus tricolor and similar frogs of the same genus. Martin says the spiders may build these traps specifically to catch the nocturnal tree frogs, which typically like to hide from predators such as birds between overlapping leaves during the hot daylight hours.
鈥淲e think that there is a systematic trapping,鈥� says Fulgence, adding that it is also possible the spiders trap small geckos, which also hide between leaves.
The shelter serves a dual purpose, giving the spiders cover from birds that may try to eat them as well.
Ecology and Evolution
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