City spiders are getting bigger all the time with the help of artificial light, researchers have found.
Studying the common Nephila plumipes, a spider that inhabits both rural and urban environments, scientists measured the arachnids in each setting to compare their size, fat reserves and ovary weight, Discovery News reported.
Spiders in more urban areas had larger, fatter bodies compared with their rural counterparts, their growth likely spurred by bright lights and heat, according to the study published in PLOS ONE on Wednesday.
"Artificial night lighting has many implications for spider fitness as it leads to local increases in insect abundance, and increased prey capture for spiders in lit habitats," the University of Sydney research team wrote in the study.
While some wild creatures can't handle city life, spiders seem to thrive in urban settings. The researchers hypothesized that both increased heat from artificial lighting, which creates a "heat island" in the city, as well as hard surfaces encourage spider growth.
"We found associations with size and hard surfaces and lack of vegetation," said lead researcher Lizzy Lowe, who is an ecology graduate student, as quoted by Smithsonian.com.
Lowe and the other research team members worked with spiders around Sydney, searching for spiders in 20 nearby sites and capturing 222 of the golden orb weavers altogether.
"They are abundant in urban Sydney, and I was interested to find out why," explained Lowe, who first suggested a link between bigger spiders and urban settings in 2012.
Besides size, the city spiders had heavier ovaries than the spiders in more rural settings, signifying that they will reproduce more frequently.
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