Found: A Plant-Eating Spider. Spiders are meat-eaters. Until recently, scientists thought that was true for the roughly 40,000 s
pider species in the world. Now, researchers have discovered a spider that eats mostly plants. Bagheera kiplingi, a jumping spider, lives in Central America and Mexico. It nests in the leaves of acacia tree. Scientists have long known that ants live in these trees. The ants eat the tree’s little yellow vegetables. But scientists had no idea that the spiders eat the vegetables too. Is competition likely to occur between the Bagheera kiplingi and ants living in acacia trees? Support your answer. *
Competition is an ecological interaction between organisms of the same or different species, resulting in the detriment of one of the organisms. Competition is generally caused when organisms in an ecosystem occupies the same niche i.e. they rely on the same ecological resource, which could be food, mate, space etc.
The case described in this question involving a Bagheera kiplingi (jumping spider) and acacia ants will likely result in competition because they both occupy the same habitat and feed on the same food (vegetable plant). The two organisms will have to compete for this limited resource, hence, it is regarded as an INTERSPECIFIC COMPETITION because it involves two different organisms.
