PRESERVING SPIDERS' WEBS

Spiders’ webs

What is a spider’s web? Webs provide spiders with a means to trap their food and, in some cases, a place to shelter. Webs consist of blends of different silks, cleverly combined for functionality. Take the ‘typical’ orb web of the common garden spider (compare the photo on this page), which has evolved to take out-ofplane loads at optimized deflections. To be able to do so, this web needs to in...

Orb Webs in "non-orb Weaving" Ogre-faced Spiders (araneae: Dinopidae): a Question of Genealogy

Observations of web spinning behavior in Costa Rican Dinopis sp. reveal the same behaviors synapomorphic for orb weavers: specifically frame, radius, non-sticky spiral construction, and sticky spiral construction, as well as more detailed motor patterns. Dinopids are therefore highly derived orb weavers, although the behavioral data do not conclusively indicate whether they are more closely rel...

Spiders’ Webs and Locally Connected Julia Sets of Transcendental Entire Functions

We show that, if the Julia set of a transcendental entire function is locally connected, then it takes the form of a spider’s web in the sense defined by Rippon and Stallard. In the opposite direction, we prove that a spider’s web Julia set is always locally connected at a dense subset of buried points. We also show that the set of buried points (the residual Julia set) can be a spider’s web.

Sticky webs, hungry spiders, buzzing flies, and fractal metaphors: on the misleading juxtaposition of "risk factor" versus "social" epidemiology.

Upside-down spiders build upside-down orb webs: web asymmetry, spider orientation and running speed in Cyclosa.

Almost all spiders building vertical orb webs face downwards when sitting on the hubs of their webs, and their webs exhibit an up-down size asymmetry, with the lower part of the capture area being larger than the upper. However, spiders of the genus Cyclosa, which all build vertical orb webs, exhibit inter- and intraspecific variation in orientation. In particular, Cyclosa ginnaga and C. argent...