Burrows serve a variety of purposes, ranging from providing environmental stability to safety from predators to a secluded place for recuperation or reproduction. Site choice and burrow fidelity are critical parameters to evaluate, as they determine the energy cost of burrowing to an animal in its lifetime. We used Passive Integrated Transponders (PIT tags) as permanent, internal markers to monitor burrow fidelity in the tarantula Aphonopelma hollyi over the span of 14 months.
Results/Conclusions During this time span, all 16 tagged females abandoned their burrows.We analyzed how typical the period of the study was in terms of climate in relation to the previous ten years statistically, but we failed to reveal any significant differences in terms of precipitation or air temperature. Using logistic regression we determined that days of precipitation per month was the only significant variable explaining the percentage of PIT-tagged females remaining in their burrow at each monthly time interval (p = 0.039). It may be that tarantulas in this environment respond to instability in the soil substrate caused by intermittent heavy rainfall by abandoning their burrows.
