Research on the Impact of Temperature on Spiders (Arachnida, Araneae)

Abstract

Spiders, in the order of Arachnids, play a very important role in nature. As the rapid climate changes nowadays, spiders are likely to be affected by changing weather. There are lots of studies discovering the impact of temperature on animals. However, they left a lacking of knowledge about the potential influence of temperature on spiders. Therefore, this article aims to provide a comprehensive account to better understand the relationship between temperature and spiders throughout their lives. The impact on spiders’ breeding was first described that the increasing temperature would increase the frequency of male mating behaviors, but the success rate of female mating was not determined as different results were got from two pieces of research. Secondly, the rising temperature could increase the fecundity and hatching rate of spider eggs. However, if the temperature continues to rise to a critical value, the spider eggs will stop hatching. On the other hand, the impact of temperature on spiderlings’ development is not fully proven, but the temperature will cause an impact on spiderlings' behavioral development. The impact on the social structure and population of spiders might not be driven by a single factor, temperature. Further study on more different species is required to expand the discovery across the whole spiders' population. This article gives the reader an overview of the effects of temperature on spiders, especially reproduction, so that people can more easily and intuitively understand these different effects, and provide some perspectives and possible directions for future research.