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October 28, 2025<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Spooky Web Patterns May Help Spiders Sense Prey<\/p>\n
Researchers simulated the effects that different web decorations had on vibrations, adding fresh insight to a decades-old debate about the function of these structures<\/p>\n
By Andrea Tamayo edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier<\/span><\/p>\n Spiders such as this Argiope bruennichi sometimes adorn webs with zigzagging stabilimenta.<\/p>\n Pierluigi Rizzo (member of Aracnofilia – Italian Society of Arachnology) (CC-BY 4.0)<\/p>\n Every year Halloween enthusiasts adorn their homes with synthetic cobwebs. But humans aren\u2019t the only creatures who decorate their abodes.<\/p>\n Spiders bedeck their webs with \u201cstabilimenta\u201d\u2014various woven patterns that are typically made of a different kind of silk than the rest of the web. In a new study published Wednesday researchers reported that they found that these \u201cweb decorations\u201d may help the spiders detect certain vibrations that can help them find their prey.<\/p>\n Arachnologists have debated the function of these ornaments for decades. Early researchers in the field called such a decoration a \u201cstabilimentum\u201d (Latin for a \u201csupport\u201d) because they believed the structures helped stabilize webs. But this hypothesis has been proven wrong, says Gabriele Greco, a bioengineer at the University of Pavia in Italy and co-author of the recent study, which was published in PLOS One.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Scientists have also proposed that stabilimenta shield spiders from harsh ultraviolet rays, convey water for the arachnids to drink, or can either visually attract or repel prey. There is just one function that researchers widely agree on: stabilimenta help spiders of some species hide from predators. But \u201cthere are many different types of [web] geometries,\u201d Greco says, \u201cand this makes the possibilities of new functions available to spiders.\u201d<\/p>\n A creature landing or moving on a spider web generates force. This force can become a vibration that travels through the silk that the spider can perceive. While reading old papers, Greco was unable to find any research into how stabilimenta shape those vibrations.<\/p>\n He and his colleagues chose to study Argiope bruennichi\u2014a large spider that has yellow, black and white stripes and spins classic webs with spiral patterns\u2014because the species is easy to find and one of the only spiders that produces stabilimenta in Italy, said Greco. He and his colleagues took images of six different types of stabilimenta in the forests of Sardinia over the course of two years.<\/p>\n There was the classic, or \u201cnormal,\u201d stabilimentum\u2014a dense, thick, zigzagging thread. Similarly, the \u201cjuvenile\u201d stabilimentum that was produced by juvenile spiders zigzagged, but it was not as thick. The researchers called web decor that was woven on only one side from the center of the web \u201creduced.\u201d \u201cDrafted\u201d stabilimenta appeared as incomplete or thin zigzags. And some webs had no stabilimenta at all. Lastly, the team categorized a \u201cplatform\u201d stabilimentum: a thick and dense network of silk, woven in a symmetric pattern in the middle of the web.<\/p>\n Once these structures were photographed, the researchers created computer simulations to model how vibrations spread through the various webs. They tested the effect that different directions of impact had on each web.<\/p>\n In the simulations, the team first found that stabilimenta had no effect on waves from the force of an object landing perpendicular to the web or hitting it from the side toward the center. \u201cUntil here, I was happy because this is exactly what I expected,\u201d Greco says.<\/p>\n But sometimes prey gets stuck in a web and thrashes from side to side, emitting vibrations parallel to the spiral. Greco was surprised to find that stabilimenta in the platform shape can play a huge role in transmitting that vibration. In the simulations, a platform stabilimentum made it possible for some vibrations to reach the web\u2019s far side by improving connectivity among the threads\u2014a process that, in nature, would help the waiting arachnid detect prey. (A similar but milder effect came through with other stabilimentum shapes.)<\/p>\n \u201cThis adds one more piece to the puzzle,\u201d says Todd Blackledge, a biologist at the University of Akron, who was not involved in the study, \u201cI think the really important take-home message of this paper is that they did not find a big, dramatic effect\u201d of stabilimenta overall. He emphasizes that because the study was based on modeling, we still need to ask, \u201cDoes this really apply to real spiders in the real world?\u201d<\/p>\n Greco sees this study as a starting point to categorizing stabilimenta\u2019s effects on vibration\u2014and next he hopes to study such spooky effects in the wild.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" October 28, 2025 3 min read Spooky Web Patterns May Help Spiders Sense Prey Researchers simulated the effects that different web decorations had on vibrations, adding fresh insight to a decades-old debate about the function of these structures By Andrea Tamayo edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Spiders such as this Argiope bruennichi sometimes adorn webs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[18279,4819,9061,13163,2504,18280,3352],"class_list":{"0":"post-31360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-arachnids","9":"tag-patterns","10":"tag-prey","11":"tag-sense","12":"tag-spider","13":"tag-vibrations","14":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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