Spider silk : evolution and 400 million years of spinning, waiting, snagging, and mating /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Brunetta, Leslie, 1960-
Imprint:New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2010.
Description:1 online resource (xvi, 229 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color)
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11182132
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:Craig, Catherine Lee.
ISBN:9780300163155
0300163150
129946386X
9781299463868
9780300149227
0300149220
Digital file characteristics:text file
PDF
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-218) and index.
In English.
Print version record.
Summary:""In Spider Silk, Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig offer a history of this marvelous stuff that readers will find surprisingly compelling---not only for the astonishing complexity of spider silk itself but also for the many uses for it that spiders have created over the ages. It is, in other words, the epitome of evolutionary innovation."--Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution" ""This wonderful book cures arachnophobia for any lucky reader. Brunetta and Craig combine superb scholarship with engaging writing, providing a compelling introduction to evolution in action through the lens of spiders and their silks."--Simon Levin, Princeton University, author of Fragile Dominion" ""From black widows to balloon-riders and bola-swingers, spider evolution depends critically on a few proteins in silk. Brunetta and Craig weave genetics and behavior into a silky-smooth portrait of this fascinating group."--Richard Wrangham, Harvard University, author of Catching Fire; How Cooking Made Us Human" ""Spider Silk---a wonderful, charismatic natural history of spiders---will truly inspire all readers who may never before have appreciated this unique group of organisms."--Margaret Lowman, author of Life in the Treetops: Adventures of a Woman in Field Biology and It's a Jungle Up There: More Tales from the Treetops." "Spiders, objects of eternal human fascination, are found in many places: on the ground, in the air, and even under water. In Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, writer Leslie Brunetta and evolutionary biologist Catherine L. Craig have teamed up to produce a substantive yet entertaining book for anyone who has ever wondered, as a spider rappelled out of reach on a line of silk, "How do they do that?""
"The orb web, that iconic wheel-shaped web most of us associate with spiders, contains at least four different silk proteins, each performing a different function and all meshing together to create a fly-catching machine that has amazed and inspired humans through the ages. Brunetta and Craig tell the intriguing story of how spiders evolved over 400 million years to add new silks and new uses for silk to their survival "toolkit" and, in the telling, take readers far beyond the orb. The authors describe the trials and triumphs of spiders as they use silk to negotiate an ever-changing environment, and they show how natural selection acts at the genetic level and as individuals struggle for survival."
Other form:Print version: Brunetta, Leslie, 1960- Spider silk. New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2010 9780300149227
Standard no.:10.12987/9780300163155
Review by Choice Review

This well-received book is the wonderfully entertaining product of a collaboration between Brunetta, a freelance journalist and former Fulbright scholar, and Craig, a respected evolutionary biologist and author of Spiderwebs and Silk (2003). As the book delves into the evolution, properties, and multiple uses of spider silk, it takes the reader on brief forays into Greek mythology, paleontology, the foundations of Darwinian theory, Mendelian genetics, the Watson-Crick model of DNA structure, and protein chemistry. Modern spiders produce six or more different silks, and the changes in the structure of these fibrous proteins allow them to function as glues, water-repellent packaging, rappelling ropes, snares, and trip lines. The scattering of light by protein droplets in the silk even helps to obscure spider webs from flying insects, thus aiding their capture. The authors offer a fascinating look into how modifications of the strength, stickiness, and appearance of the silk used to make trip lines or webs allow spiders to extend their senses and physical reach. Silken webs can provide a spider with a home, a fortress, and a snare, whereas lines allow it to balloon on air currents for hundreds of kilometers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and public library collections, all levels. M. J. O'Donnell McMaster University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review