The Functions of Non-Prey Foods in the Diets of Entomophagous Species

Nutrition is at the heart of biology even in its broadest sense. We are what we eat, after all, and the quest for something to eat drives the behavior and anatomy of most organisms. Biologists reinforce this premise, since the ecological placement of an organism is often trophic in nature. Herbivores eat plants and thereby influence vegetational communities; detritivores consume dead material, thereby facilitating nutrient cycling; entomophagous species are key to the topdown regulation of insect communities. These broad trophic designations are important to understanding how food webs work, but the trophic placement of arthropods is seldom so simplistic. Facultative consumption of different types of food outside an organism’s normal trophic designation offers flexibility to an organism and partially fuels the evolution of new species, but it also adds a shroud of complexity to traditional understanding of how organisms interact. Indeed, the intricate nutritional ecology of an organism has striking implications for where it ultimately fits in a food web, and ignoring key dietary components of an organism will quickly disrupt the predictability of where, when and how this organism functions within a community.