MIN Faculty
Facultyof Mathematics, Informatics
and Natural Sciences
and Natural Sciences
The Ant-SlayerWinner of the video contest in the category Biology
3 July 2023, by MIN-Dekanat
Alfonso Aceves-Aparicio and Pablo Narezo-Guzman took first place in the biology category with their video "The Ant-Slayer." Their video uses impressive high-speed footage to show how the Australian spider Euryopis umbilicata (ant-slayer) takes down much larger and more defensible prey. The hunting technique consists of two phases: The first phase is a kind of acrobatic attack in which the spider swoops over the ant from its resting hunting position while itself secured to the trunk by capture silks. It pulls this capture silk out of its spinnerets with its hind legs, thus immobilizing the ant. The first phase occurs within 300 milliseconds. In the second hunting phase, the spider circles the ant to entangle it in more adhesive silk and then executes the fatal venomous bite. The Australian spider has an 85 percent success rate in its attack, making it one of the most successful predators in the world.
The competition: Show us your research videos!
Research at the MIN Faculty should become more visible! This was the motto of the MIN faculty's competition "Show us your research videos! In this series we present the videos of the winners of the individual departments, which were awarded by a prize jury.
