Good news for arachnophobes: some spiders that haunt houses could flee to escape the terrifying smell of ants, a study reveals this Wednesday.
A team of biologists started from the hypothesis that most house spiders being easy prey for some ants, they avoided this weaving their web in places populated by these insect colonies.
The researchers therefore selected three species of forage ants, including the European red ant (
Myrmica rubra
), present in temperate areas of the globe and which abounds in certain dwellings in North America.
These ants can be extremely aggressive, capable of cutting into pieces spiders daring to encroach on their territory, explains Andreas Fischer of Simon Fraser University in Canada, lead author of the study published in Royal Society Open Science.
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The researchers put insects on filter paper for 12 hours, letting their bodies release chemicals such as pheromones.
Spiders of several species were then placed in small glass chambers interconnected by tubes: some contained the paper impregnated with the smell of ants, others the same paper, but previously washed.
As a result, the olfactory stimuli from the Myrmica rubra ants showed a significant repellent effect on three of the selected spider species: the false black widow (Steatoda grossa), the western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus) and the field tegenaria. , also called wandering spider (Eratigena agrestis).
Natural insecticides
Although poisonous, these domestic spiders rarely bite and "are not a danger to humans," according to Andreas Fisher. But "a lot of misconceptions circulate on the Internet", confusing them in particular with other species with deadly poison, which feeds the fear of the eight-legged animals nestled in the dark recesses of the dwellings.
Men have developed several tactics to get rid of it, such as chemical insecticides, but which prove to be relatively ineffective. Natural repellents such as lemon essential oil are hardly more so, according to the study. Without going so far as to introduce armies of ants into homes, using their fumes to develop a natural insecticide, "respectful" of the environment, could be a solution, argues the biologist. Such products are already used against certain pests such as moths, to disrupt their mating with the help of pheromones.
