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Riparian hunting spiders do not rely on aquatic subsidies from intermittent alpine streams

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Abstract

Drying in alpine streams might decrease aquatic-terrestrial trophic linkages by reducing terrestrial predation on aquatic prey. We tested this hypothesis by investigating whether a common riparian predator (hunting spiders) in alpine environments assimilated a lower proportion of aquatic prey with increasing stream intermittency. We used high temporal-resolution data from electrical resistance sensors to map patterns of naturally-occurring flow intermittency across 30 headwater streams of Val Roseg, a glacierized catchment in the Swiss Alps. We collected riparian hunting spiders, as well as potential terrestrial and aquatic macroinvertebrate prey, from streams and their associated riparian zones across two seasons (Alpine spring and summer). We estimated aquatic contributions to spider diets (pA) using (i) a gradient approach with aquatic invertebrate and spider carbon stable isotope ratio values (δ13C), and (ii) Bayesian carbon and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope mixing models. Spider pA from the gradient method were not statistically different from zero in spring (0.08 ± 0.10) and low in summer (0.16 ± 0.04). Mixing models also estimated low dependence on aquatic prey in both seasons, although with potentially higher contributions in summer. Spider diet did not vary with increasing flow intermittency in either season. Our results suggested that alpine hunting spiders obtain most of their carbon from terrestrial prey. The slight increase in spider pA during summer may correlate with peak emergence periods for aquatic insects, indicating opportunistic feeding by this riparian predator.

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Data availability

The datasets analysed during the current study are available in the Dryad repository  https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gxd2547jp (Siebers et al. 2020b).

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this project was provided through Eawag Discretionary Funds for Research, the Ernst Göhner foundation, Gelbert foundation, and Department of Nature and Environment, Canton Graubünden. We thank Benjamin Misteli, Marion Caduff, Larissa Schädler, Jorrit Mesman, Christian Ebi, and Christa Jolidon for assistance in the field and laboratory. We further thank Christian Ebi for development of the electrical resistance loggers and assistance in the field. We thank Serge Robert for analysis of EA-IRMS samples. We thank Gemeinde Pontresina for road access to Val Roseg. We are grateful to Lucrezia and Wolfgang Pollak-Thom, and staff of the Hotel Restaurant Roseg Gletscher, for their hospitality. We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers, who provided comments that improved the quality of this article.

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  1. Amael Paillex

    Present address: ECOTEC Environment SA, 1203, Geneva, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Andre R. Siebers, Amael Paillex & Christopher T. Robinson

  2. Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Christopher T. Robinson

  3. Centre for Freshwater Ecosystems, La Trobe University, 3690, Wodonga, VIC, Australia

    Andre R. Siebers

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Siebers, A.R., Paillex, A. & Robinson, C.T. Riparian hunting spiders do not rely on aquatic subsidies from intermittent alpine streams. Aquat Sci 83, 25 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-021-00779-7

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