Araneus diadematus - Spider facts - Please help

[VixS]

Hi

I have been researching the Araneus diadematus (Garden Spider/ orb weaver) for a childrens book which I would like to be fact accurate.

Things that seem to have several points of view. If any spider expert here could help I would be most grateful!
these are:

It is only the female who spins the web.

Spiders don't get stuck in their own webs because they don't make all their lines sticky and therefore only walk on the unglued lines.

They eat their web every night, bugs and all, and respin every morning.

if you could let me know if the above statements are True or False (and you source of info would be helpful too)

Thanx in anticipation of a swift reply

Vix
x

[No.9 Spider]

Originally Posted by VixS

Hi

I have been researching the Araneus diadematus (Garden Spider/ orb weaver) for a childrens book which I would like to be fact accurate.

Things that seem to have several points of view. If any spider expert here could help I would be most grateful!
these are:

It is only the female who spins the web.

Spiders don't get stuck in their own webs because they don't make all their lines sticky and therefore only walk on the unglued lines.

They eat their web every night, bugs and all, and respin every morning.

if you could let me know if the above statements are True or False (and you source of info would be helpful too)

Thanx in anticipation of a swift reply

Vix
x

Hi Vix, welcome to WAB.

Both male and female spin webs, at least to maturity in the case of the male as the web is the method of catching their food source/prey.

As for web walking read the attached I've taken from a website:

"Everyone who educates about spiders has heard the question "why don't spiders stick to their webs?" many times. Who first came up with the oil-on-the-feet idea is unknown, but it must have originally been a perfectly reasonable guess, or hypothesis. Since the decades-old origin of this idea, in some circles it's become a dogma. It's been repeated countless times in print and online. There are even classroom lesson plans built around this false "fact".

To quote two of the world's leading experts on spider silk use (Fritz Vollrath and Edward Tillinghast) writing in 1992: "Ecribellate spiders simply tiptoe around the glue, which they deposit in spheroidal globs. When a spider accidentally steps into one of these glue balls, as it sometimes does, it suffers no more inconvenience than a human stepping into a wad of gum. When a fly slams into the web, however, it hits about 50 of the droplets, enough to make it stick." I might add that most spiders don't even make sticky silk, and those that do (mainly orbweavers and cobweb weavers) still have many non-sticky threads in various parts of their webs.

To clinch the matter, investigators have found no oil-secreting glands opening on spider tarsi (end segments of legs). One unique feature web-making spiders do have on their tarsi is a third claw opposable to certain specialized bristles, enabling them to grasp individual threads. No insect has more than two tarsal claws per leg, and most are helpless in a web.

I'm indebted to Ohio University arachnologist Jerome Rovner for the germ of this article."

Lastly, the spider will not waste the web and will consume it if necessary. A Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus)will use the same web until it is, out of necessity, respun due to the damage caused by it's prey.
There are some other spider species that will spin a new web every night and consume it after use each time.

No.9 Spider