One of the most important and obvious forces shaping organismal traits is predation. Prey
have evolved diverse means of enhancing the probability of survival in the face of predation …

Birds are common predators of arthropods in many ecosystems but their impact on spiders
has not been assessed. Therefore, the experimental evidence for bird predation effects on …

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 …

This paper offers the first cladistic analysis of a wide selection of theridiid genera based on
morphological data. The analysis treats 53 theridiid taxa representing 32 genera …

Orb-weaving spiders spin five fibrous silks from differentiated glands that contain unique
sets of proteins. Despite diverse ecological functions, the mechanical properties of most of …

Spiders are the preeminent silk craftsmen among arthropods and are best known for
producing aerial orb webs that snare flying insects. Orb web spiders are ubiquitous …

A decrease in the surface area per unit volume is a well known constraint setting limits to the
size of organisms at both the cellular and whole-organismal levels. Similar constraints may …

The Pantropical spider clade Nephilidae is famous for its extreme sexual size dimorphism,
for constructing the largest orb‐webs known, and for unusual sexual behaviors, which …

The present atlas documents the morphology of representative species of 22 tetragnathid
genera, with emphasis on nontetragnathines. It includes approximately 960 scanning …

Species in ecologically similar habitats often display patterns of divergence that are
strikingly comparable, suggesting that natural selection can lead to predictable evolutionary …