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<oai_dc:dc xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:oai_dc="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/ http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd">
  <dc:contributor>Howard S. Ginsberg</dc:contributor>
  <dc:contributor>Elizabeth M. Jakob</dc:contributor>
  <dc:creator>J.D. Houser</dc:creator>
  <dc:date>2014</dc:date>
  <dc:description>&lt;p&gt;The European sheet-web spider &lt;em&gt;Linyphia triangularis&lt;/em&gt; (Araneae: Linyphiidae) has become established in Maine, where it often reaches very high densities. Two lines of evidence from previous work suggest that &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; affects populations of the native linyphiid spider &lt;em&gt;Frontinella communis&lt;/em&gt;. First, &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt; individuals are relatively scarce in both forest and coastal habitat where &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; is common, but more common where &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; is at low density. Second, in field experiments, &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt; species are less likely to settle in experimental plots when &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; is present, and &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt; disappears from study plots when &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; is introduced. Here we test two mechanisms that may underlie these patterns. First, we tested whether &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; invades and usurps the webs of &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt;. When spiders were released onto webs of heterospecifics, &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; was more likely to take over or share webs of &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt; than the reverse. We also observed natural takeovers of &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt; webs. Second, we explored the hypothesis that &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; reduces prey availability for native species. We sampled flying prey in areas with &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; and those where it had been removed, and found no effect of spider presence on measured prey density. We also found no effect of prey supplementation on web tenacity in &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt;, suggesting that &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt; movements are not highly dependent on prey availability. We conclude that web takeover is likely more important than prey reduction in driving negative effects of &lt;em&gt;L. triangularis&lt;/em&gt; on &lt;em&gt;F. communis&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</dc:description>
  <dc:format>application/pdf</dc:format>
  <dc:identifier>10.1007/s10530-014-0679-0</dc:identifier>
  <dc:language>en</dc:language>
  <dc:publisher>Springer</dc:publisher>
  <dc:title>Competition between introduced and native spiders (Araneae: Linyphiidae)</dc:title>
  <dc:type>article</dc:type>
</oai_dc:dc>