The Ecology and Evolution of Hawaiian Spider Communities

By Rosemary Gillespie

The diversification of Hawaiian spiders illustrates universal principles behind community assembly on evolutionary and ecological scales

Evolution Ecology

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March-April 2005

Volume 93, Number 2
Page 122

DOI: 10.1511/2005.52.122

In his poem A Noiseless Patient Spider, Walt Whitman observed how arachnids, tirelessly spinning their webs, explore "the vacant, vast surrounding." Whitman's admiration for spiders isn't shared by all of us, but the eight-legged creatures do seem to get everywhere, which makes them ideal to study the processes of ecology and evolution.

W. Andrew Recher

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