Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, 2109, Australia.
Departamento de Ecologia, Centro de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Lagoa Nova, 59072-970, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
Evolution. 2019 Oct;73(10):2122-2134. doi: 10.1111/evo.13834. Epub 2019 Sep 10.
Physical structures built by animals challenge our understanding of biological processes and inspire the development of smart materials and green architecture. It is thus indispensable to understand the drivers, constraints, and dynamics that lead to the emergence and modification of building behavior. Here, we demonstrate that spider web diversification repeatedly followed strikingly similar evolutionary trajectories, guided by physical constraints. We found that the evolution of suspended webs that intercept flying prey coincided with small changes in silk anchoring behavior with considerable effects on the robustness of web attachment. The use of nanofiber based capture threads (cribellate silk) conflicts with the behavioral enhancement of web attachment, and the repeated loss of this trait was frequently followed by physical improvements of web anchor structure. These findings suggest that the evolution of building behavior may be constrained by major physical traits limiting its role in rapid adaptation to a changing environment.
动物建造的物理结构挑战了我们对生物过程的理解，并激发了智能材料和绿色建筑的发展。因此，理解导致建筑行为出现和改变的驱动力、约束和动态是必不可少的。在这里，我们证明了蜘蛛网的多样化是由物理约束引导的，它们反复遵循着惊人相似的进化轨迹。我们发现，拦截飞行猎物的悬网的进化与丝锚定行为的微小变化相吻合，这对蛛网附着的稳健性有很大影响。基于纳米纤维的捕获线（cribellate 丝）的使用与提高蛛网附着的行为相冲突，而这种特性的反复丧失常常伴随着蛛网锚结构的物理改进。这些发现表明，建筑行为的进化可能受到限制其在快速适应不断变化的环境中作用的主要物理特征的限制。
