• TERN Geospatial Catalogue
  •   Search
  •   Map

Nightly activity of wolf spiders from cameras and spotlighting in the Simpson Desert

Invertebrates dominate the animal world in terms of abundance, diversity and biomass and play critical roles in maintaining ecosystem function. Despite their obvious importance, disproportionate research attention remains focused on vertebrates, with knowledge and understanding of invertebrate ecology still lacking. Due to their inherent advantages, usage of camera traps in ecology has risen dramatically over the last three decades, especially for research on mammals. However, few studies have used cameras to reliably detect fauna such as invertebrates or used cameras to examine specific aspects of invertebrate ecology. Twenty-four Reconyx PC800 HyperfireTM cameras were deployed on 7th July 2016 at Main Camp and left until 12th October 2016 (98 days, or 2352 h of deployment) in the Simpson Desert, south-western Queensland, capturing 372 time-lapse images of Wolf spiders (Family Lycosidae). Images were tagged with camera location, position, angle, camera ID and presence of lycosids. Additionally, spotlight surveys were conducted in October 2016 every hour between dusk (19:30 h) and dawn (05:30 h) over three nights with a total of 352 lycosids observed. This data set was used to determine whether: 1) camera traps provide a viable method for detecting wolf spiders, 2) diel activity patterns of the spiders can be ascertained, and 3) patterns in spider activity vary with environmental conditions, specifically between burned and unburned habitats and the crests and bases of sand dunes. This data presents a useful example of the utility of cameras as a tool for determining the diel activity patterns and habitat use of larger arthropods such as wolf spiders.

Please note: Camera trap images are not provided and only species occurrence records are included. Also, image files were renamed after collection, resulting in a number versus time conflict. However, dates and times of sightings provided are correct.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2016-10-26
Date (Publication)
2020-07-03
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Title
DataCite
Code
doi:10.25901/5efeaa710d366
Codespace
http://dx.doi.org

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Co-author

Desert Ecology Research Group, University of Sydney - Greenville, Aaron ()
City Road, Camperdown, New South Wales, 2050, Australia
Camperdown
New South Wales
2050
Australia

Co-author

Desert Ecology Research Group, University of Sydney - Rudiger, Christoph (Dr)
City Road, Camperdown, New South Wales, 2050, Australia
Camperdown
New South Wales
2050
Australia

Author

School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide - Potter, Tamara ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
This data set was used to determine whether: 1) camera traps provide a viable method for detecting wolf spiders (Family Lycosidae), 2) diel activity patterns of the spiders can be ascertained, and 3) patterns in spider activity vary with environmental conditions, specifically between burned and unburned habitats and the crests and bases of sand dunes.
Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Credit
This work was funded by the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (www.tern.gov.au), an Australian research infrastructure facility established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and Education Infrastructure Fund—Super Science Initiative through the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. This research also received support from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub. C.R.D. was also supported by an Australian Research Council Fellowship.
Status
Completed

Point of contact

School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide - Potter, Tamara ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite Road
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia
Topic category
  • Biota

Extent

Description
Main Camp, Ethabuka Reserve, Simpson Desert, South-western Queensland
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
2016-07-07 2016-10-12
GCMD Science Keywords
  • ARTHROPODS
  • ARACHNIDS
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Behavioural ecology
  • Animal behaviour
  • Forest biodiversity
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • animal activity
  • Unitless
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Unitless
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • Point Resolution
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Hourly - < Daily
Keywords (Discipline)
  • Arid ecology
  • Camera traps
  • Activity patterns
  • habitat use
  • Wolf spiders
  • Lycosidae

Resource constraints

Use limitation
The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
File name
88x31.png
File description
CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
File type
png
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
Other constraints
Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified

Distribution Information

Distribution format
  • NetCDF

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
/attachment/cf7dc9b0-6684-4102-b6f7-f0167a9be879/pOTTER_et-al_raw_data.xlsx

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd, Indooroopilly, QLD, Australia, 4068
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Resource lineage

Hierarchy level
Dataset

Process step

Description
Camera traps: Twenty-four Reconyx PC800 HyperfireTM cameras were deployed in burned and unburned areas, as well as on dune crests and dune bases. Cameras were attached to metal posts ~50 cm above the ground along four north-south facing 100 m transects, with six cameras per transect each spaced 20 m apart. Additionally, based on results from pilot trials, half the cameras were positioned vertically (facing down) and half angled at ~45° to the ground. Cameras angled at 45° had a greater field of view while those facing down were believed to have a better chance at capturing and allowing identification of lycosids. Settings were as follows: time-lapse – single image every 5 minutes between 19:00 h and 07:00 h (i.e., from just before dusk to just after dawn), and motion-trigger – single image with no delay between triggers (i.e., rapid-fire) and sensitivity set to high. Photos were tagged with location, position, angle, camera ID and species present.

Process step

Description
Spotlighting: Spotlight surveys were conducted in October 2016 and consisted of walking a 100 m transect for 10 minutes every hour between dusk (19:30 h) and dawn (05:30 h), using a hand-held spotlight (Fenix TK35, 960 lumens) to detect lycosid eye shine. The numbers of spiders observed in each 10-minute survey were tallied. Spotlight surveys were repeated over three nights, yielding a total of 33 transect surveys. For consistency, each survey was conducted along the same 100 m transect, which was marked by a row of six remote cameras.

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:4326

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/cf7dc9b0-6684-4102-b6f7-f0167a9be879

Title
TERN GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Point of contact

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Metadata linkage
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/cf7dc9b0-6684-4102-b6f7-f0167a9be879

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2016-10-26T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T10:27:28.537673+00:00

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
Edition
1

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
Edition
1.0

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
Edition
1.0
Title
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
Date (published)
2021
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
Animal behaviour Behavioural ecology Forest biodiversity
GCMD Science Keywords
ARACHNIDS ARTHROPODS

Provided by

Share on social sites

Access to the portal
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available


  •   About
  •   Github
  •