"Wingless flight: an update on ballooning in spiders and the erratical use of terms"

LETICIA BIDEGARAY.-BATISTA; ANITA AISENBERG; NELSON FERRETTI; CAROLINA GUERRA

Montevideo

Congreso; 22nd International Congress of Arachnology; 2023

International Society of Arachnology

Ballooning is an aerial dispersal mechanism used by spiders, in general by small juveniles. Bymeans of silk threads, they can travel throughout the air from short to long distances andcolonize new areas. Individuals reach high positions and perform the typical tip-toeing or otherbehaviors such as dropping on a dragline until wind currents allow them to spread, hangingfrom their silk-lines. Some authors describe a behavior of short-distance aerial dispersal calledrappelling, but that is not considered as ballooning. Though this phenomenon has receivedmore attention in the last few years, some incongruity has been observed regarding the use ofterminology related to ballooning. Our aim was to survey the status of aerial dispersal studies,looking for potential biases and incongruities in the use of definitions of pre-ballooning andballooning behaviors. We used the database of research literature SCOPUS. We obtained 203research articles, being the most used terminology ballooning (160 articles) and aerial dispersal(113 articles). 184 were experimental research articles, 9 reviews, 3 book chapters and 7 fromother categories. The terms tip toe, drop on dragline and rappelling appear differentiated fromballooning in 0%, 40% and 100% of the articles containing both terms, respectively. Spiderfamilies with reports of ballooning were Actinopodidae, Araneidae, Ctenidae, Eresidae,Linyphiidae, Lycosidae, Pisauridae, Salticidae and Theridiidae. Ballooning research seems tobe focused on few spider families and by a handful recognizable specialist. The need of detaileddescriptions, clear definitions and common terminology of ballooning and pre-ballooningbehaviors is highlighted.