{"id":20612,"date":"2026-08-25T10:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T10:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=20612"},"modified":"2026-08-25T10:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T10:26:08","slug":"welcome-to-the-spiderverse-a-world-measured-through-webs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=20612","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the spiderverse, a world measured through webs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More recently, they\u2019ve uncovered an eDNA gold mine: spiderwebs. The naturally sticky stuff traps material from its arachnid creators, crumbs from their suppers, and, crucially, bio-detritus like saliva and pollen from nearby plants and animals. Every living thing, it seems, sheds copious DNA all over the place, including into the air, and webs then easily ensnare it. \u201cIt\u2019s probably one of the best substrates we\u2019ve used and tried to date,\u201d says Joshua Newton, a molecular ecologist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, who\u2019s sampled flowers, streams, hollows of dead trees, and even filters on moving cars to study vertebrate populations.<\/p>\n
Newton recently compared the biological diversity in spider\u00adwebs with that found in other sources\u2014including vegetation swabs, water, soil, and a fan outfitted with a filter\u2014near a zoo and wildlife sanctuary outside Perth. Each had its obvious strengths: The vegetation swabs revealed more forest mammals, and the water samples identified more fish. But no passive tool matched spiderwebs\u2019 ability to ID vertebrates, echoing results from a similar study conducted in France.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where things get sticky: To gather meaningful data, they had to destroy about 40 webs. \u201cIt kind of goes against everything that we\u2019re trying to do if we\u2019re collecting the home of an organism,\u201d Newton says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fortunately, his research caught the attention of Angela McGaughran, a genomicist at New Zealand\u2019s University of Waikato. She bought a bag of faux webs from her local Halloween store, wrapped a few coat hangers, and hung them outside. The synthetic material snagged eDNA from nearby cows and sheep, as well as from exotic birds at a nearby aviary. It also detected fungal spores better than real webs\u2014a boon for plant pathologists watching for agricultural threats. Her group is now developing larger experiments to see whether artificial webs can unlock a cheap and ruthlessly efficient way to mimic spiderwebs\u2019 DNA-snagging superpowers anywhere and everywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stephen Ornes is a science writer based in Nashville.<\/em>