Black widows in an urban desert: the behavior, ecology, and evolution of an urban pest

As more than half of our population now lives in rapidly expanding urban centers, urbanization is a particularly important example of ‘Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Change’ (HIREC). The impact that HIREC has on the biota and ecosystems around us has unknown consequences for the long-term sustainability of habitats and their resources, particularly for organisms in urbanized desert locales. While urban ecology is a focus of research in these areas, relatively few studies have used integrated approaches across disciplines in understanding phenotypic evolution as desert landscapes become increasingly urbanized.  Here we propose the Western black widow spider (Latrodectus hesperus) as a model to investigate how the relatively recent urbanization of the Sonoran desert landscape impacts the local ecosystem from an integrative perspective.  Specifically, this poster is divided into four parts- presenting recent findings on black widow 1.  population genetics, 2.  ecology/stoichiometry, 3.  color variation, and 4.  behavioral ecology.  It is our hope that this synthetic approach will provide a better understanding of native biota that respond to human disturbance in ways that negatively impact human populations.