What predatory lifestyle is strongly suggested as the ancestral state for the original wolf spiders?
Surface-active, vagrant hunter.
Ancestral state reconstruction, which maps inferred lifestyles onto the molecular phylogeny of the spider family, provides strong evidence regarding the habits of the earliest wolf spiders. This analysis indicates that the original, basal members of the Lycosidae were characterized by a lifestyle centered on active searching and pursuing prey across the surface, classifying them as vagrant hunters. This contrasts with older evolutionary hypotheses which sometimes suggested that silk-based behaviors, such as web-building, represented the primitive state. The text confirms that both web building and various forms of burrowing behaviors seen today evolved later, multiple times independently, as secondary specializations into new niches.
