July 4, 2013 — Flapping insects build up an electrical charge that may make them more easily snared by spider webs, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
The positive charge on an insect such as a bee or fly attracts the web, which is normally negatively or neutrally charged, increasing the chances that an insect flying by will contact and stick to the web, said UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Victor Manuel Ortega-Jimenez.
He also suspects that light flexible spider silk, the kind used for make the spirals on top of the stiffer silk that forms the spokes of a web, may have developed because it more easily deforms in the wind and electrostatic charges to aid prey capture.
"Electrostatic charges are everywhere, and we propose that this may have driven the evolution of specialized webs," he said.
Ortega-Jimenez, who normally studies hummingbird flight, became interested in spider webs while playing with his four-year-old daughter.
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