Effect of spider’s weight on signal transmittance in vertical orb webs

Abstract

Spider orb web is a sophisticated structure that needs to fulfil multiple roles, such as trapping prey and transmitting web-borne signals. When building their web, heavier spiders tend to increase the pretension on the web, which seems counterintuitive since a tighter web would decrease the chances of stopping and retaining prey. In this article, we claim that heavier orb-weaving spiders increase tension on the web in order to reduce the attenuation of the vibratory signal coming from the bottom part of the web. We support our claim by first building a detailed spider web model, which is tuned by a tension-adjusting algorithm to fit the experimentally observed profiles. Then, the effects of the spider weight and the web tension on the signal transmittance properties are investigated using state-of-the-art finite element analysis tools.