title: Early Cretaceous spider web with its prey.
abstract: The orb web is a spectacular evolutionary innovation that enables spiders to catch flying prey. This elegant, geometric structure is woven with silk fibers that are renowned for their superior mechanical properties. We used silk gland expression libraries to address a long-standing controversy concerning the evolution of the orb-web architecture. Contrary to the view that the orb-web design evolved multiple times, we found that the distribution and phylogeny of silk proteins support a single, ancient origin of the orb web at least 136 million years ago. Furthermore, we substantially expanded the repository of silk sequences that can be used for the synthesis of high-performance biomaterials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA.
authors.forename: Enrique
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Peñalver
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Grimaldi
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Delclòs
mesh_terms: D018647:Amber; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004548:Elasticity; D005580:Fossils; D007313:Insecta; D008925:Mites; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D047011:Silk; D013112:Spiders / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D018647:Amber; D047011:Silk