Humidity-mediated changes in an orb spider's glycoprotein adhesive impact prey retention time

Properties of the viscous prey capture threads of araneoid orb spiders change in response to their environment. Relative humidity (RH) affects the performance of the thread's hygroscopic droplets by altering the viscoelasticity of each droplet's adhesive glycoprotein core. Studies that have characterized this performance used smooth glass and steel surfaces and uniform forces. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that these changes in performance translate into differences in prey retention times. We first characterized the glycoprotein contact surface areas and maximum extension lengths of Araneus marmoreus droplets at 20%, 37%, 55%, 72% and 90% RH and then modeled the relative work required to initiate pull-off of a 4 mm thread span, concluding that this species' droplets and threads performed optimally at 72% RH. Next, we evaluated the ability of three equally spaced capture thread strands to retain a house fly at 37%, 55% and 72% RH. Each fly's struggle was captured in a video and bouts of active escape behavior were summed. House flies were retained 11 s longer at 72% RH than at 37% and 55% RH. This difference is ecologically significant because the short time after an insect strikes a web and before a spider begins wrapping it is an insect's only opportunity to escape from the web. Moreover, these results validate the mechanism by which natural selection can tune the performance of an orb spider's capture threads to the humidity of its habitat.