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CAPTURE VISCID SILK. "The glue droplets are composed of about 80 per cent water as well as glycoproteins that adhere to prey and small hygroscopic molecules. Viscid silk is stickier per volume when compared with cribellate silk, which increases prey capture potential and ultimately spider fitness." https://lnkd.in/dqTjK77 View in LinkedIn

MEASURING LEG. "The form of a spider's web can be seen as a representation of inherited rules of behaviour, although the geometry of the orb web is not rigidly predetermined. The garden spider Araneus diadematus Clerk orients the main (capture) spiral of the web according to measurements taken by particular legs. This is apparent when a measuring leg has been regenerated, because the reduced length of the regenerate is reflected in the geometry of the capture spiral." https://lnkd.in/dfgxXRZ View in LinkedIn

SPIDER VISCID SILK. "Araneoid capture silk, often referred to as viscid or sticky silk, is more economical to produce because of an alternative mechanism of adhesion. As the axial fibres are extruded from the flagelliform glands, an aqueous glue coating is simultaneously deposited from the aggregate glands onto the axial fibres and coalesces into microscopic droplets along the fibre's length." https://lnkd.in/dqTjK77 View in LinkedIn

WIDE BELL CURVE. "In addition to variability among silks types, there is substantial inherent variability in silk properties within the same silk types produced by individual spiders. This may be in part owing to variation in silk fibroin gene sequences and heterogeneous nanoscale morphology of silk fibres." https://lnkd.in/dqTjK77 View in LinkedIn

CRIBELLATE STRUCTURE. "Cribellate silk is composed of a pair of axial fibres (produced by the pseudo-flagelliform glands) surrounded by a sheath of microscopic fibrils that are brushed onto the axial fibres from a specialized plate called a cribellum. This silk is dry and achieves its stickiness via hygroscopic and van der Waals forces." https://lnkd.in/dqTjK77 View in LinkedIn

STRUCTURAL STRENGTH. "Webs with a low radial to spiral turn ratio can be classed as low-energy absorbing, while webs with a high radial to spiral turn ratio are high-energy absorbing." https://lnkd.in/dqTjK77 View in LinkedIn

RADIAL THREADS. "The high tensile strength and hysteresis of radial threads means they not only support the web but also work as shock absorbers during prey impact, while the geometric regularity of the web may help to spread prey energy out over more radial threads. Also, as radials have high tensile strength and stiffness while capture silks have lower strength but high elasticity, the ratio of radials to capture spiral turns may determine the energy-absorbing capabilities of a web." https://lnkd.in/dqTjK77 View in LinkedIn

"A HOPEFUL MONSTER is an individual phenotypically discontinuous from the range of phenotypes of its population, and whose hopes of establishing a new lineage lie in finding a novel niche for which its monstrosity happens to be preadapted." A freak of extreme hybridization between species. https://lnkd.in/dDz5VYD View in LinkedIn

GHOST IN THE MACHINE. "The secret of complex life lies in the chimeric nature of the eukaryotic cell—a hopeful monster, born in an improbable merger 2000 million years ago, an event still frozen in our innermost constitution and dominating our lives today." A profound truth. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

SINGLE LEAP. "If the origin of the eukaryotic cell was not a bottleneck, then it was probably a genuinely unlikely sequence of events, for it happened only once." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn