This research requires travel of two people to Hawai’i for collection of samples. Field season will be for two months. Collection work will be done for two weeks at each of the four locations in the Hawaiian archipelago. All samples will be brought back to the University of Akron where silks will be characterized using equipment present at the University and techniques standard to our lab.

Budget details:

Once in Hawai'i, inter-island flights will be covered by an external grant: $1000

Additional Information

Figure 1. Comparison of web-building behaviors among species of Tetragnatha on three different islands in the Hawaiian archipelago. Variation in architectures of individual spiders' webs has been summarized along two PCA axes. PCA1 largely contrasts smaller, medium, and larger webs, whereas PCA2 contrasts webs with relatively little silk (loose, open, sticky spirals and few radii) versus webs with medium and relatively dense silk (longer, tightly packed spirals of sticky silk and many radii). (A-C) Variation in web architecture of individual species within each island. Ellipses denote 95% confidence intervals for the mean (±SE) of species along each axis. (D) Comparison of species means across islands reveal three ethotypes where pairs of species construct webs that are more similar to one another than to all other species. (E-J) Exemplar webs showing each ethotype are bordered by the same color as in D. Islands are indicated by the silhouettes in the lower left corner of each picture. Medium-sized, medium-silk-density webs are constructed by T. stelarobusta on Maui (E) and T. hawaiensis on Hawai'i (F). Medium-sized, low-silk-density webs are constructed by the emerald ovoid morphospecies on O'ahu (G) and T. eurychasma on Maui (H). Small, medium-silk-density webs are constructed by T. filiciphilia on Maui (I) and the eurylike morphospecies on O'ahu (J). (Scale bar, 5 cm.)‏

Figure 2. Phylogenetic analysis of the historical relationships among species. Bootstrap values from the maximum parsimony analysis are presented above each node, bootstrap values from the maximum likelihood analysis are presented to the left of each node, and clade posterior probabilities from the Bayesian inference analysis are presented to the right of each internode. Colors of the branches denote different islands optimized as unordered and unpolarized character states. Web illustrations denote the three ethotypes. Members of each ethotype arose independently of one another in at least two of the three instances.

Table 1. List of locations and focal species target in this study.

Figure 3. Diagram of an orb-web. Radii is build by the spider using major ampullate silk, while the sticky capture spirals are build using glue-coated Flagelliform silk. Capture spiral and major ampullate threads will be collected directly from webs found in the field, mounting them in cardboard slides.