Meeting Abstract
Due to their poor eyesight, spiders rely on web vibrations for situational awareness. In particular, 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. Through a combination of scaled-up physical models (on a 1.2m artificial web constructed of parachute and bungee cord), computer simulations, and measurements on real spider webs, we have identified features in webs’ vibration responses that indicate the source location of disturbances applied to the web. In particular, the vibration responses *above* the webs’ first fundamental frequencies contain strong signatures corresponding to the range and direction of the disturbance. These results highlight that vibrations in webs (and other continuous media) carry information not only by faithfully transmitting signals from the source to a single receptor, but also in the differences between how the signals are transmitted to multiple receptors; we suggest that this extra information path should be accounted for in studies of organisms’ behavioral response to vibratory stimuli.
