I have been fortunate to receive funding for a project on studying the anti-predatory and foraging behaviour of the cave spider Meta menardi from the competitive John Fell Fund for University of Oxford researchers and from the British Cave Research Association. The project, which will be carried out with MBIOL project student Emily Brannigan from the University of Oxford will include a range of in-situ behavioural experiments and observations in UK caves, including the caves at Creswell Crags. In short, we’ll be looking at how cave spiders respond to tuning forks (escape vs prey attack) depending on the distance into the cave (a safety gradient trade-off, with sites closer to the cave entrance more at risk of predation, but also encountering more flying prey) and attempt to collect evidence of how they capture non-flying.
The funding covers equipment (semi high-speed camera, light meters, etc.), transportation and accommodation costs as well as some funding for field assistance.
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