Spider webs : behavior, function, and evolution

In this lavishly illustrated, first-ever book on how spider webs are built, function, and evolved, William Eberhard provides a comprehensive overview of spider functional morphology and behavior related to web building, and of the surprising physical agility and mental abilities of orb weavers. For instance, one spider spins more than three precisely spaced, morphologically complex spiral attachments per second for up to fifteen minutes at a time. Spiders even adjust the mechanical properties of their famously strong silken lines to different parts of their webs and different environments, and make dramatic modifications in orb designs to adapt to available spaces. This extensive adaptive flexibility, involving decisions influenced by up to sixteen different cues, is unexpected in such small, supposedly simple animals. As Eberhard reveals, the extraordinary diversity of webs includes ingenious solutions to gain access to prey in esoteric habitats, from blazing hot and shifting sand dunes (to capture ants) to the surfaces of tropical lakes (to capture water striders). Some webs are nets that are cast onto prey, while others form baskets into which the spider flicks prey. Some aerial webs are tramways used by spiders searching for chemical cues from their prey below, while others feature landing sites for flying insects and spiders where the spider then stalks its prey. In some webs, long trip lines are delicately sustained just above the ground by tiny rigid silk poles. Stemming from the author’s more than five decades observing spider webs, this book will be the definitive reference for years to come. "Spider webs are considered by many to be the most spectacular structures of the natural world. Their designs, their creation, and their maintenance and utility are a wonderful way in which to explore intricacies of behavior and evolution. And no current scientist has spent more time in the webs than William Eberhard, of the Smithsonian; in fact he has likely watched more species of spider build webs than any other individual. He has written for spiders the equivalent of Kent Wells Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians, a work which will be the definitive reference on spider webs. In this book, Eberhard tours readers through all elements of webs-the types of silk, the ways in which it is spooled by the spider legs, how spiders choose web sites, the primary patterns webs follow, the varying degrees of time it takes to construct webs, why spiders rebuild webs, etc. And he unspools all that is known about the behavioral repertoires of the web designers, the spiders. In aggregate, Eberhard shows how close observations of behavior can answer large and small questions in biology regarding the functions of morphology and behavior, and how complexity and diversity arise in nature"-- Provided by publisher