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SPIDER BEHAVIORAL SHIFTS. "Accompanying cribellum loss in both groups is a release from substrate-constrained webs, whether by aerially suspended webs, or by abandoning webs altogether. These behavioral shifts in silk and web production by spiders thus likely played a key role in the dramatic evolutionary success and ecological dominance of spiders as predators of insects." https://lnkd.in/db9PJGx View in LinkedIn

REPEATED EVOLUTIONARY LOSSES. "Within the “RTA clade,” which is the sister group to orb-weaving spiders and contains half of all spider diversity, >90% of species richness is associated with repeated loss of cribellate silk and abandonment of prey capture webs." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

THUMBNAIL OVERVIEW. "Spiders first began spinning silk approximately 400 Ma. There are at least 41 000 described species of spiders spinning silk in every known terrestrial ecosystem except Antarctica. Many of these spiders produce seven to eight distinct types of silks that are used in a variety of webs, ranging from silk-lined burrows in the ground to aerial orb-webs to the seemingly chaotic three-dimensional cobwebs." https://lnkd.in/dHWBg9g View in LinkedIn

ONE ANCESTRAL TREE. "The monophyletic origin of orb webs is strongly supported, despite conspicuous differences in the silk used to spin different types of orbs." https://lnkd.in/db9PJGx View in LinkedIn

TOUGHEST MATERIAL. "Spiders produce multiple silk types, from discrete abdominal glands, that exhibit remarkable strength and elasticity surpassing most natural and artificial fibres, and they are unmatched in toughness." https://lnkd.in/dHWBg9g View in LinkedIn

"NATURAL MATERIALS are renowned for exquisite designs that optimize function, as illustrated by the elasticity of blood vessels, the toughness of bone and the protection offered by nacre. Particularly intriguing are spider silks, with studies having explored properties ranging from their protein sequence to the geometry of a web. This material system, highly adapted to meet a spider’s many needs, has superior mechanical properties." https://lnkd.in/dTx-Ej8 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE focuses on the biology of spider silk for two weekends followed by a section on the geometry of spider webs. It is not enough that these insects make the toughest material in the planet, but that they also engage in complex geometrical shapes as well. Reminiscent of MC Escher's obsession with tressellations and Kepler's six-fold geometry of snowflakes, the subject of the last two postings. View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES OF CAUSAL EFFICACY. "This convolution results in multidirectional causality with causal influences running both up and down the hierarchy of structure of biological systems (e.g. both from genome to proteome, and from proteome to genome via the switching on and off of genes)." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

STEREOTYPICAL WEBS. "The most species-rich families within Orbiculariae are the linyphiids and the theridiids. Each has independently transformed the orb into different aerial sheets. In both cases, these webs are distinguished from ancestral sheets not only in being aerial but also in the overall stereotypy of their architectures, a characteristic inherited from orb weaving ancestors." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

EFFICACY OF INFORMATION. "Perhaps even more profound, this abstraction appears to have causal efficacy - it is the information that determines the state and hence the dynamics. As such, it is the efficacy of information that leads to the convolution of dynamical laws and states that makes biology so unique." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn