A deep philosophical question...
- Thread starter Andy BB
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I've heard spiders eat their own silk, maybe they live on this during the winter.
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I've also heard the European ones fly south for the winter in pairs (carrying coconuts)
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They are spiders! you know full well what they eat and it's human souls the creepy little buggers.... *shudder*
Completely out of keeping with this thread so far, I'm going to give a serious answer...
Lots of them die and the eggs laid at the end of the year survive over the winter and hatch in the spring. Some simply sit dormant and barely feed. Those that live in sheltered habitats such as house spiders carry on as normal.
The only web-making spider in the UK that habitually carries on making a web in winter is the window-frame spider, Zygiella x-notata, but even then its prey capture rate is reduced. Still, there are insects about. Drive your car at night and in the headlight beams you will still see lots of insects, mainly flies and small moths. Those things equate to spider food.
Be grateful to spiders. Without them we would be overrun with insects of all sorts.
Lots of them die and the eggs laid at the end of the year survive over the winter and hatch in the spring. Some simply sit dormant and barely feed. Those that live in sheltered habitats such as house spiders carry on as normal.
The only web-making spider in the UK that habitually carries on making a web in winter is the window-frame spider, Zygiella x-notata, but even then its prey capture rate is reduced. Still, there are insects about. Drive your car at night and in the headlight beams you will still see lots of insects, mainly flies and small moths. Those things equate to spider food.
Be grateful to spiders. Without them we would be overrun with insects of all sorts.
Funny responses so far but you have no idea how glad I am that this answer arrived
Good question OP and an interesting answer.
Thanks
Fair point, I'll give you that one 
Apart from the obvious reduction in activity brought on by the drop in temperature surely the form of sustinance is the preserved cocooned food they have spend the warmer weather catching for their larder.
They can also enter a stasis and produce a sort of anti-freeze and wait it out.
Amazing really.
http://9e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=22&id=211
Amazing really.
http://9e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=22&id=211
The trouble with that is that they store it in their web, which won't last very long, so it isn't a reliable food source, and most spiders will feed more or less immediately. What people think is 'stored food' is usually dry husks that haven't been cleared away yet.
Like many invertebrates, spiders can go long periods without food, especially if they sit still and do nothing. A well fed spider will manage a period of 4-5 months without food without much trouble, if it has access to water now and then.
Also as Bucephalas says, many of them are capable of sitting out periods of sub-zero temperatures by accumulating anti-freeze in their bodies (usually glycerol), although that's something that a lot of inverts do, not just spiders. It happens to be what my PhD thesis was on.
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