Yurai Gutierrez Morales
Princeton High School
Princeton, New Jersey
Vegetarian Spiders Acquire Their Bacterial Symbionts Through Predation of Ant Larvae
Yurai studied the transfer of bacteria from ant larvae to vegetarian jumping spiders.
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Yurai Gutierrez Morales, 20, of Princeton, studied vegetarian jumping spiders for her Regeneron Science Talent Search animal sciences project. While most spiders eat insects, these jumping spiders get 90% of their diet from plants. They sometimes eat ant larvae.
In her project, Yurai studied a possible way these jumping spiders became vegetarian. She collected spiders and ant larvae from Akumal, Mexico. Next, she identified the different types of bacteria in these samples based on their DNA sequences.
She found one bacterial species in both the ant larvae and the spider. This finding hints at the possibility that the bacterium transferred from the larvae to the spiders when the spiders ate them. The bacterium helps ants digest plant material, so it may also help the spiders digest plants. Her work can help better understand how these plant-eating spiders evolved.
Yurai, sister of Gabrel Gutierrez, attends Princeton High School, where she helped build a demonstration garden in the school’s courtyard to showcase sustainable agricultural practices. She is an assistant for the high school’s research program, maintaining living organisms and equipment.
Beyond the Project
Yurai worked on part of her project at Centro Ecológico Akumal in Mexico. She also worked on another project during the evenings, documenting sea turtle nesting activity.
FUN FACTS: Yurai loves birds and enjoys caring for injured and abandoned animals. Currently, she is taking care of a leopard gecko she adopted.
