Saqib Hafiz Sohaib Ahmed, Liang Pingping, You Minsheng, Gurr Geoff M
State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University Fuzhou China.
Joint International Research Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control Ministry of Education Fuzhou China.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Jun 27;11(14):9543-9552. doi: 10.1002/ece3.7772. eCollection 2021 Jul.
Inter- and intra-guild interactions are important in the coexistence of predators and their prey, especially in highly disturbed vegetable cropping systems with sporadic food resources. Assessing the dietary range of a predator taxon characterized by diverse foraging behavior using conventional approaches, such as visual observation and conventional molecular approaches for prey detection, has serious logistical problems. In this study, we assessed the prey compositions and compare the dietary spectrum of a functionally diverge group of predators-spiders-to characterize their trophic interactions and assess biological control potential in Brassica vegetable fields. We used high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and biotic interaction networks to precisely annotate the predation spectrum and highlight the predator-predator and predator-prey interactions. The prey taxa in the gut of all spider families were mainly enriched with insects (including dipterans, coleopterans, orthopterans, hemipterans, and lepidopterans) with lower proportions of arachnids (such as Araneae) along with a wide range of other prey factions. Despite the generalist foraging behavior of spiders, the community structure analysis and interaction networks highlighted the overrepresentation of particular prey taxa in the gut of each spider family, as well as showing the extent of interfamily predation by spiders. Identifying the diverse trophic niche proportions underpins the importance of spiders as predators of pests in highly disturbed agroecosystems. More specifically, combining HTS with advanced ecological community analysis reveals the preferences and biological control potential of particular spider taxa (such as Salticidae against lepidopterans and Pisauridae against dipterans), and so provides a valuable evidence base for targeted conservation biological control efforts in complex trophic networks.
种间和种内捕食者与猎物之间的相互作用对于捕食者及其猎物的共存至关重要，尤其是在食物资源零散的高度干扰蔬菜种植系统中。使用传统方法（如视觉观察和用于猎物检测的传统分子方法）来评估具有多样觅食行为的捕食者类群的饮食范围，存在严重的后勤问题。在本研究中，我们评估了捕食者功能分化群体——蜘蛛——的猎物组成，并比较了它们的饮食谱，以表征它们的营养相互作用，并评估甘蓝型蔬菜田的生物防治潜力。我们使用高通量测序（HTS）和生物相互作用网络来精确注释捕食谱，并突出捕食者-捕食者和捕食者-猎物之间的相互作用。所有蜘蛛科肠道中的猎物类群主要富含昆虫（包括双翅目、鞘翅目、直翅目、半翅目和鳞翅目），蛛形纲动物（如蜘蛛目）的比例较低，还有其他各种猎物类别。尽管蜘蛛具有广食性觅食行为，但群落结构分析和相互作用网络突出了每个蜘蛛科肠道中特定猎物类群的过度代表性，同时也显示了蜘蛛科间捕食的程度。确定不同的营养生态位比例，突显了蜘蛛作为高度干扰农业生态系统中害虫捕食者的重要性。更具体地说，将高通量测序与先进的生态群落分析相结合，揭示了特定蜘蛛类群（如跳蛛科捕食鳞翅目昆虫，盗蛛科捕食双翅目昆虫）的偏好和生物防治潜力，从而为复杂营养网络中有针对性的保护生物防治工作提供了宝贵的证据基础。
