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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Structural And Wetting Properties Of Nature's Finest Silks (Order Embioptera), Grace Y. Stokes, Evangelea N. Dicicco, Trevor J. Moore, Vivian C. Cheng, Kira Y. Wheeler, John Soghigian, Richard P. Barber Jr., Janice Edgerly-Rooks
Structural And Wetting Properties Of Nature's Finest Silks (Order Embioptera), Grace Y. Stokes, Evangelea N. Dicicco, Trevor J. Moore, Vivian C. Cheng, Kira Y. Wheeler, John Soghigian, Richard P. Barber Jr., Janice Edgerly-Rooks
Physics
Insects from the order Embioptera (webspinners) spin silk fibres which are less than 200 nm in diameter. In this work, we characterized and compared the diameters of single silk fibres from nine species—Antipaluria urichi, Pararhagadochir trinitatis, Saussurembia calypso, Diradius vandykei, Aposthonia ceylonica, Haploembia solieri, H. tarsalis, Oligotoma nigra and O. saundersii. Silk from seven of these species have not been previously quantified. Our studies cover five of the 10 named taxonomic families and represent about one third of the known taxonomic family-level diversity in the order Embioptera. Naturally spun silk varied …