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posted by janrinok on Monday November 04 2019, @05:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the N2 dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Spider webs don't rot easily and scientists may have figured out why

From spooky abandoned houses to dark forest corners, spider webs have an aura of eternal existence. In reality, the silk threads can last hours to weeks without rotting. That's because bacteria that would aid decomposition are unable to access the silk's nitrogen, a nutrient the microbes need for growth and reproduction, a new study suggests.

Previous research had hinted that spider webs might have antimicrobial properties that outright kill bacteria. But subjecting the webs of three spider species to four types of bacteria revealed that the spiders use a resist strategy instead, researchers report October 23 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

The scientists "challenge something that has gone significantly overlooked," says Jeffery Yarger, a biochemist at Arizona State University in Tempe, who wasn't involved in the research. "We just assumed [the silk] has some kind of standard antimicrobial property."

Spiders spin strings of silk to trap food, wrap their eggs and rappel. Their silk webs can sport leaf debris for camouflage amidst tree canopies or leftover dead insects for a meal later. These bits and bobs lure bacteria and fungi involved in decomposition to the web, exposing the protein-rich web silks to the microbes.

"But [the microbes] don't seem to affect spider silk," says Dakota Piorkowski, a biologist at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan.

The Citation quoted below states "Our results indicate that spider silk's resistance to bacterial degradation is likely due to bacteriostatic rather than antibacterial mechanisms when nitrogen is inaccessible."

Citations:

S. Zhang et al. Nitrogen unavailability helps to protect spider silk from bacterial growth. Journal of Experimental Biology. Vol. 222, October 23, 2019. doi: 10.1242/jeb.214981.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @07:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @07:58PM (#915873)

    Actually, if the spider continues living there it will usually eat the web and spin a new one each day.

    What? Spiders eat their own web? Wow. Do you have a reputable citation? I see some ad-hoc things in Yahoo Answers and Quora, but would prefer something more reputable if it exists.

    If spiders do eat their own webs, why when I see a big web in the corner of the room, it never changes... it just stays a big tangle for however long it takes for me to muster the energy to clear it? I admit that I don't pay close attention so if the strands themselves move I wouldn't notice, but I'd have expected not enough silk would build up in the first place.