Abstract
Spider silk and spider orb webs are among the most studied biological materials and structures owing to their outstanding mechanical properties. A key feature that contributes significantly to the robustness and capability to absorb high kinetic energy of spider webs is the presence of junctions connecting different silk threads. Surprisingly, in spite of their fundamental function, the mechanics of spider web junctions have never been reported. Herein, through mechanical characterization and imaging, we show for the first time that spider orb webs host two different types of junction, produced by different silk glands, which have different morphology, and load bearing capability. These differences can be explained in view of the different roles they play in the web, i.e. allowing for a localized damage control or anchoring the whole structure to the surrounding environment.
Highlights
Spider silk is a unique protein-based material produced by the silk glands of spiders[1,2,3]
As big loads could be fatal to the structure, causing an extended and irreversible damage, high kinetic energy objects are allowed to pass through the web by producing a localized rupture, e.g. of a single junction
The interaction among the threads and their anchorages to the substrate could provide an explanation to the mechanical efficiency of the orb webs
Summary
Spider silk is a unique protein-based material produced by the silk glands of spiders[1,2,3]. Owing to its outstanding mechanical properties, which have been investigated in depth[4,5,6,7,8], spider silk is currently under consideration for different applications, ranging from engineering to medicine[9,10,11,12,13] During their evolution, spiders have used their silk for a variety of purposes, including production of egg sacs, mating behavior, self-defense and prey capture[1,2,14]. Web threads interact in a synergistic fashion that provides the whole structure with its unique capability of minimizing the area damaged by the impact of an object, e.g. flies[17] Despite their fundamental role, spider web junctions have never been deeply characterized. In order to explain the need for the presence of two different junctions in the orb web, we performed, for the first time, both morphological analyses and mechanical characterization tests
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