I found some information about spiders' webs in this article:
Spiders’ webs
by Vollrath, Fritz
Source: Scopus™
Publication Title: Current Biology
Publisher: Elsevier In
Volume 15, Issue 10, 24 May 2005, Pages R364–R365
It has some really good information about the different purposes of spiders' webs and their functionalities. For example, their webs are used to mainly trap their food but only some would use it as a place to shelter.
A web is made up of blends of different silks: the fairly stiff, radius silk threads and the
extremely soft, extensible and sticky capture silk threads, which are fixed on
the radii by stringy silk cement. Spider silk contains many different organic and inorganic components,
such as neurotransmitter peptides, glyco-proteins, lipids, sugars, phosphates,
calcium, potassium and sulphur. Spidroin proteins are highly
repetitive in their main section and rich in the amino acids alanine and
glycine.
I also learnt there are different types of spiders' webs:
The Orb Web
The Zygiella
The pattern of a spiders web is determined by the behavoural pattern of the spider and the environment it is in. The web is many times the spider’s size.
I think it would be interesting to research more into the different types of spiders webs and why they're different.
Tammi.
I have found through looking into spiders webs that they are more and more interesting! Not only are they a place which the spider lives in but they are multi- functional and are produced in a whole range of different ways and with different structures and materials and designs. I love looking at the way that nature has been crafted to enable different animals to adapt and survive. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we were to have a go at constructing our own webs!
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting, when you look into the more technical side of the spiders' web! I think this is a very wide area and there is so much which there is to look at and consider. We also seem to have found a lot of stuff on it though!
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