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Vol. 49 No. 2, 2010
Spiders Used as Prey by the Hunting Wasp Trypoxylon (Trypargilum) agamemnon Richards (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae)
Maria Luisa Tunes Buschini1,*, Talita Ribas Caldas1, Neide Augusta Borba1, and Antônio Domingos Brescovit2
1Departamento
de Biologia da Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste, Rua Presidente
Zacarias 875, 85010-990, Guarapuava (PR), Brasil
2Laboratório de Artrópodes, Instituto Butantan, Av. Vital Brasil 1500, 05503-900, São Paulo, Brasil
Maria Luisa Tunes Buschini, Talita Ribas Caldas, Neide Augusta Borba, and Antônio Domingos Brescovit (2010) The purpose of this study was to monitor the spider fauna in Trypoxylon agamemnon
nests. The study was carried out from Dec. 2001 to Dec. 2006 in
the Parque Municipal das Araucárias, in the municipality of Guarapuava,
state of Paraná, southern Brazil. Nests of T. agamemnon were obtained using trap-nests made of wooden blocks. To investigate the similarity between spider species in T. agamemnon’s
diet, spiders species were grouped according to their abundances, using
the Bray-Curtis coefficient as a metric method and the unweighted pair
group method average (UPGMA) as the clustering method. Spider
species dominance was calculated, and Chi-square tests were used to
test the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference among
the proportions of collected juvenile, male, and female spiders.
In contrast to what was recorded for other species of spider-hunting
wasps, T. agamemnon
exclusively captures spiders (of the Anyphaenidae) that forage on the
vegetation. This probably maintains niche partitioning between Trypoxylon species that occur in the Parque Municipal das Araucárias, reducing competition for prey resources.
Key words: Crabronidae, Trypoxylon agamemnon, Spider, Prey use.
*Correspondence: E-mail:isatunes@yahoo.com.br
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