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Punctuated evolution of viscid silk in spider orb webs supported by mechanical behavior of wet cribellate silk

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Abstract

The origin of viscid capture silk in orb webs, from cribellate silk-spinning ancestors, is a key innovation correlated with significant diversification of web-building spiders. Ancestral cribellate silk consists of dry nanofibrils surrounding a stiff, axial fiber that adheres to prey through van der Waals interactions, capillary forces, and physical entanglement. In contrast, viscid silk uses chemically adhesive aqueous glue coated onto a highly compliant and extensible flagelliform core silk. The extensibility of the flagelliform fiber accounts for half of the total work of adhesion for viscid silk and is enabled by water in the aqueous coating. Recent cDNA libraries revealed the expression of flagelliform silk proteins in cribellate orb-weaving spiders. We hypothesized that the presence of flagelliform proteins in cribellate silk could have allowed for a gradual shift in mechanical performance of cribellate axial silk, whose effect was masked by the dry nature of its adhesive. We measured supercontraction and mechanical performance of cribellate axial silk, in wet and dry states, for two species of cribellate orb web-weaving spiders to see if water enabled flagelliform silk-like performance. We found that compliance and extensibility of wet cribellate silk increased compared to dry state as expected. However, when compared to other silk types, the response to water was more similar to other web silks, like major and minor ampullate silk, than to viscid silk. These findings support the punctuated evolution of viscid silk mechanical performance.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Lance Johnson for assistance collecting silk samples, Matjaž Gregorič for collecting U. plumipes spiders, and Chen-Pan Liao for assistance with statistical analysis. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

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  1. Dakota Piorkowski

    Present address: Department of Life Science, Tunghai University, Taichung, 40704, Taiwan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, The University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325-3908, USA

    Dakota Piorkowski & Todd A. Blackledge

  2. Department of Biology, Integrated Bioscience Program, The University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325, USA

    Todd A. Blackledge

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  1. Dakota Piorkowski
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Correspondence to Todd A. Blackledge.

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Communicated by: Sven Thatje

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Piorkowski, D., Blackledge, T.A. Punctuated evolution of viscid silk in spider orb webs supported by mechanical behavior of wet cribellate silk. Sci Nat 104, 67 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-017-1489-x

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