Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating »

Leslie Brunetta is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, Technology Review, and the Princeton Alumni Weekly as well as on NPR and elsewhere. Catherine L. Craig, author of the monograph Spiderwebs and Silk, is an internationally recognized evolutionary biologist, arachnologist, and authority on silk.

Spiders, objects of eternal human fascination, are found in many places: on the ground, in the air, and even under water. Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig have teamed up to produce a substantive yet entertaining book for anyone who has ever wondered, as a spider rappelled out of reach on a line of silk, “How do they do that?”

The orb web, that iconic wheel-shaped web most of us associate with spiders, contains at least four different silk proteins, each performing a different function and all meshing together to create a fly-catching machine that has amazed and inspired humans through the ages. Brunetta and Craig tell the intriguing story of how spiders evolved over 400 million years to add new silks and new uses for silk to their survival “toolkit” and, in the telling, take readers far beyond the orb. The authors describe the trials and triumphs of spiders as they use silk to negotiate an ever-changing environment, and they show how natural selection acts at the genetic level and as individuals struggle for survival.

Journal of Insect Conservation

“This is a compelling and immensely readable account that engages the reader from start to finish and that I found difficult to put down.” –Tim R. New, Journal of Insect Conservation

— Tim R. New

Preface

Acknowledgments

A Timeline of the Spider Fossil Record

One Fossils 1

Two Living Fossils 16

Three Chance and Change 25

Four Outward and Upward 41

Five Triumph over Thin Air 56

Six Small Changes, Big Benefits 73

Seven Spinning, Running, Jumping, Swimming 96

Eight Going Vertical 111

Nine Links 136

Ten Now You See It, Now You Don't 157

Eleven Beyond "Perfect" 171

Twelve Endless Forms 186

Notes 193

Glossary 199

Bibliography 205

Index 219