Spiderwebs Are Noninvasive Way of Sampling Terrestrial Vertebrates

Spiderwebs are more than a home to spiders. It could also collect DNAs from other terrestrial vertebrates.

Spiderwebs Amplify DNA From Webs

Researchers have discovered that environmental DNA, which represents the animal population in a region, can be extracted from spiderwebs. The method might help monitor an ecosystem's biodiversity.

However, Josh Newton, an Australian Ph.D. candidate in genetic biodiversity at Curtin University, and Morten Allentoft, an evolutionary biologist and Newton's advisor, wanted to know if these webs were also capturing vertebrate animal DNA deposited by insects or carried there by the wind. Thus, Newton drove to a wooded sanctuary roughly thirty miles outside Perth, where he gathered spiderwebs from the shrubs and branches.

Newton claims that they have been given a plastic stick. It's similar to a scene in "Shrek" where Princess Fiona gathers spiderweb fairy floss for Shrek. All you have to do is wrap it around with a stick.

Thirteen species of birds, the snake-eyed skink, and the motorcycling frog. However, they gathered webs at the Perth Zoo to ensure that the webs were absorbing DNA from nearby vertebrate species.

DNA from meerkats, lemurs, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and orangutans was discovered there. Put differently, the method proved effective and offers a novel approach to monitoring animal variety and warning against over-exploitation.

Every species that lives in a certain habitat and ecosystem, according to Allentoft, may be breathing, urinating, decaying, or dying. Furthermore, every cell has DNA, which makes it easier for cells to shed into the environment.

Because this DNA is from organisms lying around in the environment, host Ari Daniel noted that the phenomenon is known as environmental DNA. Researchers have extracted it from the air, swabbed it from plants and flowers, filtered it from the water, and even found it inside the dung beetle's stomach.

Why Spiderwebs Are Noninvasive

During the chat, Allentoft mentioned that spiderwebs are noninvasive and that the spiders were not killed during the experiment. The team decided to usher them off their web gently.

Elizabeth Clare, a molecular ecologist at York University in Toronto who wasn't involved in the study, agreed that spiderwebs are a noninvasive way to sample terrestrial vertebrates. She also admitted that they could be great materials for studying the DNA movement.

DNA flow via water has been the subject of thousands of articles, whereas very few are on land. Therefore, further investigations are important to constrain the material's path, accumulation mechanism, and signal duration.

What Are Spiderwebs?

Spiderwebs are made of silk, a naturally occurring protein spiders use to weave their webs. Spider silk not only combines the advantageous qualities of extensibility and high tensile strength, but it may also be exquisite.

UK spiders typically produce white or bluish-colored silk. There are seven distinct types of silk glands, each making a unique type of silk with various applications. Cribellate silk, for instance, has a lot of wool.

The curator of arachnids at the Museum, Jan Beccaloni, also mentioned that cribellate silk adheres to the legs and bristles of imprisoned insects like Velcro.

Check out more news and information on Scorpion in Science Times.