Do static electric forces contribute to the stickiness of a spider's cribellar prey capture threads?
✍ Scribed by Opell, Brent D.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 457 KB
- Volume
- 273
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-104X
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
Cribellar thread is the most primitive type of prey capture thread produced by spiders. Its dry surface is formed of thousands of fine fibrils that catch on the setose surfaces of insects and, by an unknown mechanism, also hold smooth surfaces. Static electric attraction has been suggested as the force by which these smooth surfaces are held. However, when the stickiness of cribellar threads produced by Hyptiotes cavatus and Uloborus glomosus (family Uloboridae) was measured with contact plates that had similar textures but very different dielectric values, no support was found for this hypothesis. Differences in stickiness values were small and showed no relationship to the dielectric indexes of the surfaces used to measure stickiness. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.