Body burdens of metals in spiders from the Lidice coal dump near Ostrava (Czech Republic)

Spiders' feeding behaviour and external digestion expose them to man-made pollutants, especially those easily transferred along the food chain. The problem for this study was whether the levels of heavy metals in selected species of spiders from the Lidice coal dump reflect adaptation to environmental pollutants. We used flameless and flame AAS to measure the whole-body concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cu, Zn, Fe, Ni and Mg in male and female spiders differing in their hunting strategies, type of web construction, prey, and taxonomic position (Araneidae, Agelenidae, Linyphiidae, Theridiidae, Tetragnathidae, Lycosidae, Salticidae, Pisauridae, Clubionidae, Philodromidae). The levels of metals found in the spiders were species-dependent, indicating differences related to the hunting strategy and type of prey. Accumulation of Pb, Cu and Zn was always higher in ground spiders than in web-constructing species. Sheet-web spiders Linyphia triangularis and wandering spiders Clubiona lutescens had the lowest Cd, Mg and Cu content of all the studied species. Web-building spiders of the Tetragnathidae family showed the highest Cd, Cu and Pb content, even in species with feeding behaviour similar to spiders of other families. There were no interspecific differences in accumulation only for Fe and Mg. The concentrations of Cd, Ni and Pb were lower in females than in males, irrespective of their taxonomic position and the intensity of their hunting activity. This may suggest that females have better metal-excretion ability than males.