Every year Halloween enthusiasts adorn their homes with synthetic cobwebs. But humans aren’t the only creatures who decorate their abodes. Spiders bedeck their webs with “stabilimenta”—various woven ...

After a spider finishes weaving its web, it sometimes adds one last touch. A bright zigzag down the middle, like a silken “X.” These flourishes, known as stabilimenta, have puzzled scientists for a ...

Every year Halloween enthusiasts adorn their homes with synthetic cobwebs. But humans aren’t the only creatures who decorate their abodes. Spiders bedeck their webs with “stabilimenta”—various woven ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract We tested three hypotheses concerning the function of stabilimenta in the orb weaver Gasteracantha cancriformis: 1) warning to large animals ...

This is a spider web as seen in bird vision (left), and fly vision (right). The zigzags on the spider's web send a secret message to birds that their insect prey can't see, even from less than a foot ...

Rachael has a degree in Zoology from the University of Southampton, and specializes in animal behavior, evolution, palaeontology, and the environment. Rachael has a degree in Zoology from the ...

Conditional strategy theory provides a theoretical and experimental framework from which to predict both population differences in the expression of alternative behavioral phenotypes and the condition ...

The stabilimentum in Argiope bruennichi. a) The production of aciniform silk by A. bruennichi when wrapping a prey. b) A juvenile A. bruennichi in the centre of its web with the stabilimentum ...