They can feed 800 million tons of insects a year. They play a unique role in the food chain on the planet.

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A jumping spider (Phidippus mystaceus) struggling with his meal. Spiders can eat up to 800 million tons of insects per year | David E. Hill, Peckham Society, Simpsonville, South Carolina

What they were the top predators was known for some time, but it certainly is a surprise the amount of food that spiders, together, consume annually.

According to recent research, in fact, it seems to be able to feed an amount of food comparable to 2 times the weight of the animals that all humans consume each year.

The researchers calculated that the spiders can incorporate up to 800 million tons a year of prey. The figure is impressive, true, but conceals an important fact: with their appetite, arachnids play an important natural work, keeping under control and balance the environment.

More than 90% of the diet of spiders, in fact, is constituted by insects and springtails (a different genre from insects, albeit similar to these) that devour in enormous quantities, and that prvvedono to eliminate, maintaining the balance of ecosystems.

A springtail, until a few years ago, insects were considered, now form a group to itself |

There are 25 million tons. Explain Nyffler Martin, one of the researchers of the University of Basel in Switzerland who conducted the research: "Our calculations allow us to quantify for the first time on a global scale the amount of food they ingest the spiders, but also to say that are the main natural enemies of insects. They work the same way as ants and birds, with whom reduce the population significantly insects, maintaining important ecological balance. "

In order to quantify the amount of food ingested by the spiders of the search group first determined what the global population of spiders in terms of biomass. So an analysis of the different terrestrial biomes been made, from the forests to the prairies, to the fields and other areas, a job that led to the conclusion that on Earth there are about 25 million tons of spiders (most out of your home , quiet), divided into 45,000 different species.

Predators insatiable, but great balance referees in nature. Spiders can eat up to 800 million tons of insects a year.

Voracious. At this point, considering the different population densities of spiders in different environments and the food needs of each species per unit of body weight, researchers have estimated that each year all spiders Earth feed from a minimum of 400 to a maximum of 800 million tons of prey.

The work of spiders in eliminating insects is much more intense in forests and grasslands, where yes is assumed to be the responsible of the elimination of 95% of the insects that disappear every year.

In the forests spiders are major insect exterminators. They kill 95% of those who disappear in a year |

To get an idea of the immense work of these organizations, we think that global human consumption of meat and fish does not exceed 400 million tons per year and also considering the largest animals on the planet, whales, it turns out they swallow no more than 500 million tons of fish per year.

Now we have to understand, the researchers say, what is the importance of spiders in the food chain, given their weight in insects feed on huge quantities.

From Focus