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201035 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.201035 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 2025-05 19 pages Echavarria, Nelly Johnson, Chadwick Cahill, Thomas Barrett, The Honors College School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences HIRECs (Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Changes) such as urbanization influence prey availability and behavioral plasticity for urban exploiters to thrive. Black Widow Spiders are meso-predators that can thrive in urban settings and demonstrate behavioral plasticity through predation and defense strategies. Often, venomous predators are examined to see if they are optimizing their use of venom, so-called venom metering. This study focuses on quantifying venom metering in an urban exploiter– the black widow spider. The procedure includes a foraging trial in which the spider was offered a large or small cricket to bite and alternated the size for a total of four repeated measures of prey size. The foraging trials documented the following: wrap duration, spider mass difference, time to prey death, and prey mass difference. We used a repeated measure analysis and paired t-tests to view the correlations and consistencies in the foraging trials and between spider and prey. Our results demonstrated consistency in time to prey death and significant session effects on wrap duration, time to death, and prey mass difference. While we were unable to document variation in venom transfer, we do show that large-sized crickets die significantly slower than small crickets. This indicates that black widows do not optimize (i.e. meter) their venom transfer depending on the size of the prey. This study further documents the predation strategies of a common urban exploiter (pest of medical importance). Black Widow Spiders Venom Venom Metering No Variance in Venom Metering Among Black Widow Spiders