Lily Tanner, a student at New College of Florida, worked with Denzell Cross and Dr. Krista Capps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abstract: Urbanization often compromises the\ndiversity and abundance of native species living in watersheds (Rodrigues et\nal., 2015). Research has shown that riparian spiders are susceptible to land\nuse change associated with urbanization (Sanchez-Ruiz et al., 2017). We conducted a spider density survey in riparian habitats in\nand around Atlanta as a metric to assess the impact of urbanization on regional\nspider populations. We hypothesized that if overhanging vegetation was\nimportant web-building substrate for some taxa and vegetation provided\ncover for ground-dwelling species, then the highest density of spiders would be\nfound in transects with vegetation hanging over the stream. Our results indicate that overhanging vegetation was related to\nhigher densities of web-weaving species. Increasing amounts of overhanging\nvegetation was also related to increasing bank slope, suggesting there may be\npotentially important interactions between physical and biological\ncharacteristics of riparian areas that mediate spider population structure.<\/p>\n\n\nTanner<\/a>\n Lily Tanner, a student at New College of Florida, worked with Denzell Cross and Dr. Krista Capps. Abstract: Urbanization often compromises the diversity and abundance of native species living in watersheds (Rodrigues et al., 2015). Research has shown that riparian spiders are susceptible to land use change associated with urbanization (Sanchez-Ruiz et al., 2017). We<\/p>\n