Colorful woven spider to do?

(Photo: cirrusimage.com)

Ecologist Todd Blackledge of the University of California, Berkeley (USA) - over a long period of research - thinks that many spiders often adorn their nets with shiny, eye-catching silks, called is stabilimenta (this is the same material that they often use to bind prey).

These pieces of silk can be woven into rows, into checkerboard, circular or twisted form, and are changed design daily. When hunting, spiders will stand in the middle of the trap, waiting to see where the vibrating mesh is immediately rushed to it.

Researcher Todd Blackledge tried to rearrange the pairs of American Argiope spiders next to each other and remove the decorative parts of at least half of them. As a result, colorful nets catch 30% less bait than 'empty' nets.

However, the number of spiders living in colorful nets is less eaten by the Sphecidae - Argiope's spider enemies -. Todd Blackledge said that the Argiope spiders have accepted to exchange some of the food they can earn in exchange for their own safety. According to him, other spiders also have similar survival strategies, only the decoration of spider webs, depending on species, is often very different.

NGUYEN SINH