Dinesh's photos with the keyword: Australian Museum

Spiders are natural predators that eat many types of insects, including flies, mosquitoes, moths, roaches, beetles, caterpillars, leafhoppers, and aphids. Some spiders, like the funnel weaver, even eat ants. Spiders can help reduce the spread of diseases carried by insects, such as malaria and Zika. Biodiversity indicators A healthy ecosystem has a rich diversity of spiders. Spider silk Spider silk is strong, durable, flexible, elastic, and biodegradable. It has many potential uses, including in construction, manufacturing, clothing, textiles, wound dressings, and more. Bioindicators of human activity Spiders can indicate the presence of human-made pollutants in the environment. For example, spiders collected from Antelope Island had high concentrations of mercury, which indicated that mercury had entered the terrestrial food web.