Capture thread extensibility of orb‐weaving spiders: testing punctuated and associative explanations of character evolution

Spider orb‐webs contain sticky prey capture threads and non‐sticky support threads. Primitive orb‐weavers of the Deinopoidea produce dry cribellar threads made of thousands of silk fibrils that surround supporting axial fibres, whereas the viscous threads of modern Araneoidea orb‐weavers produce adhesive threads with an aqueous solution that coalesces as droplets around the axial fibres. We have previously shown that the greater diversity of the Araneoidea is phylogenetically significant and attributed this disparity to a number of advantages, considered key innovations, that adhesive thread has over cribellar thread. An important putative advantage of adhesive thread demonstrated by Kohler and Vollrath in their 1995 study is its greater extensibility, a feature that better adapts it to absorb the kinetic energy of a prey strike. However, this conclusion is based on a two‐species comparison that does not take advantage of the modern comparative method that requires hypotheses to be tested in a phylogenetic context. Using a transformational analysis to examine threads produced by nine species, our study finds no support for the punctuated explanation that adhesive thread has a greater extensibility than cribellar thread. Instead, it strongly supports the associative null hypothesis that capture thread extensibility is tuned to spider mass and to architectural features of the web, including its capture area, capture spiral spacing, and capture area per radius.