Analysis of the environmental and trophic niches of crab spiders (Araneae: Thomisidae) through Citizen Science
Understanding ecological niches is essential for evaluating how species react to environmental changes and shifts in trophic interactions driven by climate change. Yet, combining both abiotic and biotic components of these niche remains a complex and resource-intensive task. Citizen Science platforms offer a cost-effective solution by providing large-scale, openly accessible, and multi-taxa datasets. However, spiders are often underrepresented in these datasets, largely due to public discomfort or fear. Among spiders, the Thomisidae family (Sundevall, 1833), which includes brightly coloured species frequently spotted on flowers with captures prey, stands out as a promising group for studying ecological niches using Citizen Science data. This research utilizes 627 Italian observations from the iNaturalist platform, focusing on three Thomisidae species — Misumena vatia (Clerck, 1757), Thomisus onustus (Walckenaer, 1805) and Synema globosum (Fabricius, 1775) — to investigate their ecological niches on both the environmental and trophic dimensions. Each record included visual documentation of spiders on flowers with prey. We explored their associations with the Köppen’s clime classification by examining niche metrics such as overlap, equivalency and similarity, unfilling, expansion, and stability. The results revealed that M. vatia shows a preference for Alpine-Temperate regions, whereas T. onustus and S. globosum are more commonly found in Mediterranean-Temperate climate. The same parameters indicated the greatest environmental overlap between T. onustus and S. globosum. Additionally, bipartite network analyses demonstrated that all the three considered species primarily hunted on Asteraceae flowers, particularly targeting members of the Apidae family. Nonetheless, network structure, dietary overlap, and specialisation exhibited minor variations across climatic regions. Overall, this study emphasizes the potential of Citizen Science to capture complex ecological relationships, illustrating how climate shapes interactions among spiders, their prey and flowering plants. These findings are important for understanding how climate change could impact trophic dynamics in arachnid communities, often overlooked in ecological monitoring.