Food provisioning to Pardosa spiders decreases the levels of tissue-resident endosymbiotic bacteria

We hypothesized that the species richness and relative abundance of microbial endosymbionts of lycosid spiders affect and can be affected by feeding and that differences in colonization by microbial endosymbionts can project to changes in locomotor parameters. Therefore, we provisioned two spider species, Pardosa agrestis and Pardosa palustris, with three types of diets (Drosophila flies, Metopolopium aphids, or starving), recorded the amount of killed prey, analyzed the microbiome of their legs and cephalothorax, and analyzed differences in locomotor behavior.