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Science 23 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5781, p. 1761
DOI: 10.1126/science.1126628
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Brevia

Early Cretaceous Spider Web with Its Prey

Enrique Peñalver,1 David. A. Grimaldi,1* Xavier Delclòs2

Araneoid spiders are renowned for their efficient capture of flying insects with intricate aerial webs. Origins of this web structure are obscure, however, because they rarely fossilize. Reported here is an exceptional situation of insects trapped in part of a gummy aerial web preserved in a runnel of amber from Spain that is ~110 million years old (Early Cretaceous). This is the oldest direct evidence of a spider web made by Araneoidea and of its use for predation. Thus, the interception of flying insects by spiders has a minimum age coinciding with the explosive diversification of the angiosperms and of major pollinating groups of insects.

1 Department of Entomology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA.
2 Departament d'Estratigrafia, Paleontologia i Geociències Marines, Facultat de Geologia, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: grimaldi{at}amnh.org

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Adhesive recruitment by the viscous capture threads of araneoid orb-weaving spiders.
B. D. Opell and M. L. Hendricks (2007)
J. Exp. Biol. 210, 553-560
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)