Capture silk scaffold production in the cribellar web spider.

Spider capture silk is a natural scaffolding material that outperforms most synthetic materials in terms of its combination of strength and elasticity. Among the various kinds of silk threads, cribellar thread is the most primitive prey-capturing type of spider web material. We analyzed the functional organization of the sieve-like cribellum spigots and specialized calamistral comb bristles for capture thread production by the titanoecid spider Nurscia albofasciata. The outer cribellar surface is covered with thousands of tiny spigots, and the cribellar plate produces non-sticky threads composed of thousands of fine nanofibers. N. albofasciata cribellar spigots are typically about 10 μm long, and each spigot appears as a long individual shaft with a pagoda-like tiered tip. The five distinct segments comprising each spigot is a defining characteristic of this spider. This segmented and flexible structure not only allows for spigots to bend individually and join with adjacent spigots, but it also enables spigots to draw the silk fibrils from their cribella with rows of calamistral leg bristles to form cribellar prey-capture threads.