Meeting Abstract
Web-building spiders tend to have poor eyesight and rely on web vibrations for situational awareness. Web-borne vibrations are used to determine the location of prey, predators, and potential mates. The influence of web geometry and composition on web vibrations is important for understanding spider’s behavior and ecology. Studies in web vibrations have experimentally measured the frequency response of web geometries by removing threads from existing webs. The full influence of web structure and tension distribution on vibration transmission; however, has not been addressed in prior work. Furthermore, little attention has been given to developing dynamic models for web vibrations. We have constructed artificial webs and computer models to better understand the effect of web structure on vibration transmission. An instrumented test stand has been built for artificial web construction, control of web tension, and vibration analysis. Artificial webs of 1.2 m in diameter were made of different types parachute cord to mimic the different stiffnesses of silk that spiders use in constructing their webs. Accelerometers placed radially around the hub of the artificial web (at the feet of the “spider”) were used to measure vibration response. A receptance-coupling approach was used to model vibrations in the web as networks of strings. We are presenting our initial results on model correlation, prey detection, and implications of basic changes in web geometry on vibration transmission.
