News Release

'Ballooning' spiders grounded by infection

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMC (BioMed Central)

Ballooning Spider

image: This is a money spider "ballooning." view more 

Credit: Goodacre et al., BMC Biology

Money spiders infected with Rickettsia bacteria are less likely to 'balloon' – that is, to use their silk as sails to catch gusts of wind and travel long distances. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology suggest that it may be in the bacteria's interests to ground the spiders and that this reduction in dispersal could reduce gene flow and impact on reproductive isolation within the meta-population.

While working at the University of East Anglia, Sara Goodacre led an international team of researchers who investigated the microbes' effect on the spiders' ballooning behavior. She said, "Because we found no reduction in fitness associated with Rickettsia infection, the reduced long-distance dispersal seems unlikely to be simply due to decreased body condition caused by illness. Rather, we believe that reducing long-distance dispersal could be an evolved adaptive modification by bacterial infections to promote their own transmission".

The researchers treated the spiders with antibiotics to reduce the bacterial infection and showed that this increased their ballooning frequency. They also observed that Rickettsia-infected spiders reared in the laboratory had reduced long-distance (but not short-distance) dispersal. This parasite-induced change in a non-reproductive trait has never been shown before and, according to Goodacre, "Clearly shows that the dynamics of ecosystem services such as a spider's pest-controlling function may be altered as a consequence of bacterial infection".

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Notes to Editors

1. Microbial modification of host long-distance dispersal capacity
Sara L Goodacre, Oliver Y Martin, Dries Bonte, Linda Hutchings, Chris Woolley, Kamal Ibrahim, C.F. George Thomas and Godfrey M Hewitt
BMC Biology (in press)

During embargo, article available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/4311313462073763_article.pdf?random=121832
After the embargo, article available at journal website: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbiol/

Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.

Article citation and URL available on request at press@biomedcentral.com on the day of publication

2. Images of ballooning spiders are available here:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/graphics/email/images/spider1.jpg
http://www.biomedcentral.com/graphics/email/images/spider2.jpg

Please credit Goodacre et al., BMC Biology

3. BMC Biology - the flagship biology journal of the BMC series - publishes research and methodology articles of special importance and broad interest in any area of biology and biomedical sciences. BMC Biology (ISSN 1741-7007) is covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, BIOSIS, CAS, Scopus, EMBASE, Zoological Record, Thomson Reuters (ISI) and Google Scholar.

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