Blamires Sean J, Little Douglas J, White Thomas E, Kane Deb M
Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biology, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, UNSW Sydney NSW 2052, Australia.
Macquarie University Photonics Research Centre and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia.
R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Apr 22;7(4):192174. doi: 10.1098/rsos.192174. eCollection 2020 Apr.
The silks of certain orb weaving spiders are emerging as high-quality optical materials. This motivates study of the optical properties of such silk and particularly the comparative optical properties of the silks of different species. Any differences in optical properties may impart biological advantage for a spider species and make the silks interesting for biomimetic prospecting as optical materials. A prior study of the reflectance of spider silks from 18 species reported results for three species of modern orb weaving spiders ( and ) as having reduced reflectance in the UV range. (Modern in the context used here means more recently derived.) The reduced UV reflectance was interpreted as an adaptive advantage in making the silks less visible to insects. Herein, a standard, experimental technique for measuring the reflectance spectrum of diffuse surfaces, using commercially available equipment, has been applied to samples of the silks of four modern species of orb weaving spiders: , , and . This is a different technique than used in the previous study. Three of the four silks measured have a reduced signal in the UV. By taking the form of the silks as optical elements into account, it is shown that this is attributable to a combination of wavelength-dependent absorption and scattering by the silks rather than differences in reflectance for the different silks. dragline silk emerges as a very interesting spider silk with a flat 'reflectance'/scattering spectrum which may indicate it is a low UV absorbing dielectric micro-fibre. Overall the measurement emerges as having the potential to compare the large numbers of silks from different species to prospect for those which have desirable optical properties.
某些圆蛛编织的蛛丝正逐渐成为优质的光学材料。这激发了人们对这类蛛丝光学特性的研究，尤其是不同种类蛛丝的比较光学特性。光学特性上的任何差异都可能赋予蜘蛛物种生物学优势，并使这些蛛丝作为光学材料在仿生探索中具有吸引力。先前一项对18种蜘蛛蛛丝反射率的研究报告了三种现代圆蛛（ 和 ）的结果，称其在紫外线范围内反射率降低。（这里所说的“现代”是指较新演化而来的。）紫外线反射率降低被解释为一种适应性优势，使蛛丝对昆虫的可见度降低。在此，一种使用市售设备测量漫反射表面反射光谱的标准实验技术已应用于四种现代圆蛛（ 、 、 和 ）蛛丝的样本。这是一种与先前研究中所使用的不同技术。所测量的四种蛛丝中有三种在紫外线区域信号减弱。考虑到蛛丝作为光学元件的形态，结果表明这归因于蛛丝对波长依赖的吸收和散射的综合作用，而非不同蛛丝在反射率上的差异。牵引丝成为一种非常有趣的蛛丝，其具有平坦的“反射率”/散射光谱，这可能表明它是一种低紫外线吸收的介电微纤维。总体而言，该测量方法有潜力比较来自不同物种的大量蛛丝，以寻找具有理想光学特性的蛛丝。
