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SLIPPERY IDEA. "Biological information is a notoriously difficult concept to define. This difficultly stems in part from the fact that in living systems the dynamics are coupled to the information content of biological states such that the dynamics of the system change with the states and vice versa." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

FIRST EVOLUTION. "Instead of cribellate and ecribellate orb webs evolving in parallel, orb monophyly explicitly implies that dry cribellate capture spirals were replaced by ecribellate gluey spirals. This involves 2 major changes. First, a shift in the silk used to produce the core fibers of capture threads, resulting in novel tensile properties." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

TRANSITIONS DRIVEN BY INFORMATION. "We propose that these major transitions, corresponding to major jumps in biological complexity, are associated with information gaining causal efficacy over higher levels of organization." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

WEB LOSS. "Although the orb has been lost independently at least 3 times within the context of our current taxon sampling, it has likely been lost even more frequently among all orb-weavers." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

MISSING PARTS. "More generally, while it is true that changes in how information is stored and transmitted enable the possibility of new levels of organization to evolve, such innovations are not necessarily a sufficient causative agent to drive the emergence of genuinely new, higher-level, entities." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

SPIDER WEB EVOLUTION. "Subsequent to the orb's origin, aqueous viscid silk replaced cribellate silk and the orb was transformed at least 3 times into less regular appearing aerial sheet webs. Moreover, the orb web has been highly reduced independently in tetragnathoids and Araneidae." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

HARD TO ANSWER. "Plenty of protists are capable of phenotypic differentiation but have never made the transition to true multicellularity, although they may exhibit highly collective and coordinated behaviors." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

ORB WEB GEOMETRY. "Our analysis shows that orb webs arose a single time. The orb appears to be derived from a substrate-bound web, likely an irregular ground web or brushed sheet web. The evolution of orb webs was marked by a dramatic increase in geometric regularity, resulting from increased behavioral stereotypy of spinning." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

DIVERSIFIED BY SILK. "In contrast to megadiverse orders of insects, evolutionary diversification of spiders is not coupled with major trophic shifts. Spider diversification is instead linked to key innovations in silk use." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

SILK INNOVATIONS. "The evolutionary diversification of spiders is attributed to spectacular innovations in silk. Spiders are unique in synthesizing many different kinds of silk, and using silk for a variety of ecological functions throughout their lives, particularly to make prey-catching webs." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn