ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2009
Reconstructing web evolution and spider diversification in the molecular era.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers.
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86 citing papers in PubMed, 384 citations in OpenAlex.
- Inter- and Intraspecific Variation in Web Architecture and Its Significance in Australian Funnel-Web Spiders (Atracidae).Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
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- Gene and Genome Duplication in Spiders.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2025Review
- Viscid silk in spider orb webs adheres strongly across surfaces with different roughnesses and surface energies.Biology open · 2025Article
- Gas-liquid two-phase bubble flow spinning for hydrovoltaic flexible electronics.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A Holistic Approach to Parasitoid-Host Interaction Along an Elevational Gradient Revealed Coevolution Driven by Host Foraging Strategy.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships Based on Mitogenomes of Spider: Insights Into Evolution and Adaptation to Extreme Environments.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Three Novel Spider Genomes Unveil Spidroin Diversification and Hox Cluster Architecture: Ryuthela nishihirai (Liphistiidae), Uloborus plumipes (Uloboridae) and Cheiracanthium punctorium (Cheiracanthiidae).Molecular ecology resources · 2025Article
- Scaling of the extended phenotype: convergent energetics from diverse spider web geometries.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- From fibres to adhesives: evolution of spider capture threads from web anchors by radical changes in silk gland function.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Special Prey, Special Glue: NMR Spectroscopy on Aggregate Glue Components of Moth-Specialist Spiders, Cyrtarachninae.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Chromosome-level genome of spider Pardosa pseudoannulata and cuticle protein genes in environmental stresses.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Article
- The structural analysis of secretion in the freshwater mite Limnesia maculata (Acariformes, Limnesiidae) supports the idea of a new form of arthropod silk.Experimental & applied acarology · 2023Article
- Diversity ofInsects · 2023Article
- Chromosome-level genome and the identification of sex chromosomes in Uloborus diversus.GigaScience · 2022Article
- Behavior and Bioadhesives: How Bolas Spiders,Insects · 2022Article
- Article
- Differences in the Elastomeric Behavior of Polyglycine-Rich Regions of Spidroin 1 and 2 Proteins.Polymers · 2022Article
- Mitochondrial phylogenomics provides insights into the phylogeny and evolution of spiders (Arthropoda: Araneae).Zoological research · 2022Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolutionary diversification of spiders is attributed to spectacular innovations in silk. Spiders are unique in synthesizing many different kinds of silk, and using silk for a variety of ecological functions throughout their lives, particularly to make prey-catching webs. Here, we construct a broad higher-level phylogeny of spiders combining molecular data with traditional morphological and behavioral characters. We use this phylogeny to test the hypothesis that the spider orb web evolved only once. We then examine spider diversification in relation to different web architectures and silk use. We find strong support for a single origin of orb webs, implying a major shift in the spinning of capture silk and repeated loss or transformation of orb webs. We show that abandonment of costly cribellate capture silk correlates with the 2 major diversification events in spiders (1). Replacement of cribellate silk by aqueous silk glue may explain the greater diversity of modern orb-weaving spiders (Araneoidea) compared with cribellate orb-weaving spiders (Deinopoidea) (2). Within the "RTA clade," which is the sister group to orb-weaving spiders and contains half of all spider diversity, >90% of species richness is associated with repeated loss of cribellate silk and abandonment of prey capture webs. Accompanying cribellum loss in both groups is a release from substrate-constrained webs, whether by aerially suspended webs, or by abandoning webs altogether. These behavioral shifts in silk and web production by spiders thus likely played a key role in the dramatic evolutionary success and ecological dominance of spiders as predators of insects.
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