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Novel Approaches To Exploring Silk Use Evolution In Spiders, Rachael Alfaro

Biology ETDs

Spider silk is enigmatic, and web structure, design, and adult morphology of the spinning apparatus of spiders once informed how systematists approached the spider phylogeny. The orb-web and adaptation of viscous silk was considered a key innovation leading to rapid diversification of spiders. However, the advent of molecular techniques including recent phylogenomics studies, overturned this major paradigm in spider evolution. Clades once considered monophyletic are no more. The orb-web is not a pinnacle of evolution, and the former sister group, using cribellate silk (loops of fibrils combed from a specialized silk plate on the abdomen), is now sister to the …