Life Sciences Commons^™

Water Loss Rates And Desiccation Tolerances For Spiders And Crickets, Matthew Zach, Kevin E. Mccluney

Honors Projects

Despite the importance of water to living organisms, access varies across the globe with high variability over space and time. Seventy-five percent of the world’s freshwater alone is ice while 99% of unfrozen freshwater is underground (Winter et al. 1998). Understanding how terrestrial species respond to water availability and compensate for water stress can provide insight to their behavior, ecology and physiology. The goal of this research was to examine the differences in the evaporative water loss rates and desiccation tolerances of Hogna carolinensis and Acheta domesticus. First, an experiment was conducted to quantify the rate of evaporative water …