Earth and Space News: Silk From Darwin's Bark Spiders on Elementary's The Worms Crawl In

Summary: Darwin's bark spiders are motives for animal and plant abuse, murder and theft on Elementary's The Worms Crawl In, the Worms Crawl Out Aug. 20, 2018.

Madagascar's Darwin's bark spiders (Caerostris darwini) produce silk that is over 10 times tougher than Kevlar; Wednesday, May 28, 2014, photo of male Darwin's bark spider (Caerostris darwini) by discoverer and describer Matjaž Kuntner: EOL Learning and Education Group, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Darwin's bark spiders from Madagascar are answers to crime scene motives, means and opportunities in the Elementary procedural drama series episode The Worms Crawl In, the Worms Crawl Out Aug. 20, 2018.

Director Jon Michael Hill and writers Robert Doherty, Jordan Rosenberg and Kelly Wheeler blend spider silk into silkworm bodies through gene-splicing in Season 6's 17th episode. The series' 137th episode overall considers among clues to globe-trotting, money-oriented, skirt-chasing, worm-hunting Dr. William Velnik's slashed carotid artery invertebrates, their industrial applications and their investigators. Aurora morpho and brush-footed butterflies; bonobo chimps; earthworms, flatworms, hookworms, inchworms, roundworms and velvet worms; and Formosan termites do not distract Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller).

Sherlock establishes cause-and-effect of root-knot roundworms that eat mulberry tree roots to ensure "jaundiced and brittle," not "green and plump" leaves that endanger transgenic silkworm sustainability.

Dead "tens of thousands of her silkworms" frustrate Dr. Sepi Chamanara's (Azita Ghanizada) splicing Darwin's bark spider genes into silkworms to spin "bulletproof spider silk" cocoons.

Dragonfly-consuming, mayfly-preying Darwin's bark spiders generate silky strands "ten times stronger than Kevlar" during cannibalistic life cycles where no drugs, no hormones, "nothing stops the killing." Confinement heralds cannibalism less among silkworms than among Darwin's bark spiders and "hundreds of thousands" of individual enclosures in football field-sized facilities at prohibitively high costs. Darwin's bark spiders, as Old World tropical orb-weavers, incline toward solitary spaciousness to install across lakes, rivers and streams the world's largest, longest, strongest known webs.

The Araneidae (from the Latin arānea, "spider") orb-weaving member of the Arachnida (from the Greek ἀράχνη, arákhnē, "spider") joint-legged invertebrate class juggles 82.02-plus-foot (25-plus-meter) long bridgelines.

The Madagascan endemic knows Toamasina Province distribution ranges in the 155-square-kilometer (59.85-square-foot) Andasibe-Mantadia National Park at 2,624.67- to 4,133.86-foot (800- to 1,260-meter) altitudes above sea level.

Darwin's bark spiders, listed in the official scientific literature by Smithsonian entomologists Matjaž Kuntner and Igni Agnarsson since 2010, load lots of world-strongest, world-toughest known silk. Air columns move multitudes of silk strands that Darwin's bark spiders mass-exit from spinnerets in their bodies' rear segments into one bank-to-bank bridgeline within 24 seconds. One- to 2-meter (3.28- to 6.56-foot) capture diameters need 900 square-centimeter- to 2.8-square-meter (0.9- to 30.14-square-foot) webs with three shore or stream vegetation-attached, T-like anchor lines.

Darwin's bark spiders observe 5- to 163-minute bridging; 6- to 43-minute anchoring, attaching, framing; 3- to 9-minute spoke-like line-building; and 22- to 64-minute sticky spiral-like line-constructing.

Darwin's bark spiders proliferate in montane rainforest clearing- and edge-bounded waterways in the 41,600-plus-hectare (16.06-plus-square-mile) Ranomafana National Park at 1,640.42- to 4,921.26-foot (500- to 1,500-meter) altitudes.

Black-bodied adult females queue up 1.4-inch (35-millimeter) first-leg and 0.7- to 0.9-inch (18- to 22-millimeter) body lengths and white-haired abdomens, appendages and fused heads and thoraxes. Red-brown adult males reveal 1.38-inch (35-millimeter) first-leg and 0.22- to 0.24-inch (5.7- to 6.1-millimeter) body lengths and white-haired abdomens, fused heads and thoraxes, and lower appendages. All Darwin's bark spiders, with the scientific name Caerostris darwini for naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (Feb. 12, 1809-April 19, 1882), sustain tree bark-like bumps and colors.

Sherlock thinks of investing in Darwin's bark spider-tailored tactical cloth three months short of the 159th anniversary of Darwin's The Origin of Species Nov. 24, 2018.

Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hall) and Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) visit a lab with Darwin's bark spiders in glass cases in Elementary tv series' The Worms Crawl In (season 6 episode 19): CBS Elementary episode 6.17 promotional photo, via SpoilerTV Aug. 18, 2018

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Arnarsson, Ingi; Matjaž Kuntner; and Todd A. Blackledge. 2010. "Bioprospecting Finds the Toughest Biological Material: Extraordinary Silk from a Giant Riverine Orb Spider." PLoS One 5(9): e11234. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011234.
Available via PLOS @ http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011234

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition. Penguin Reprint, 2003.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London England: George Newnes Ltd., 1892.

Gregorič, Matjaž; Igni Agnarsson; Todd A. Blackledge; Matjaž Kuntner. 26 October 2011. "How Did the Spider Cross the River? Behavioral Adaptations for River-Bridging Webs in Caerostris darwini (Aranea: Araneidae)." PLoS ONE 6(10): e26847.
Available via PLOS @ http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0026847

Gregorič, Matjaž; Agnarrson, Ingi; Todd A. Blackledge; and Matjaž Kuntner. 27 October 2011. "Darwin's Bark Spider: Giant Prey in Giant Orb Webs (Caerostris darwini, Araneae: Araneidae)." Journal of Arachnology 39(2): 287-295.
Available via American Arachnological Society @ http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_free/JoA_v39_n2/arac-39-02-287.pdf

Gregorič, Matjaž; Klavdija Šuen; Ren-Chung Cheng; Simona Kralj-Fišer; and Matjaž Kuntner. 29 April 2016. "Spider Behaviors Include Oral Sexual Encounters." Scientific Reports 6(25128). DOI: 10.1038/srep25128
Available @ https://www.nature.com/articles/srep25128

Gregorič, Matjaž; Todd A. Blackledge; Ingi Agnarsson; and Matjaž Kuntner. 20 November 2015. "A Molecular Phylogeny of Bark Spiders Reveals New Species From Africa and Madagascar (Araneae: Araneidae: Caerostris)." Journal of Arachnology 43(3): 293-312.
Available via BioOne @ http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1636/0161-8202-43.3.293

Kuntner, Matjaž; and Ingi Agnarsson. 2010. "Web Gigantism in Darwin's Bark Spider, a New Species from Madagascar (Araneidae: Caerostris)." American Arachnological Society 38(2): 346-356. https://doi.org./10.1636/B09-113.1
Available @ http://www.theridiidae.com/uploads/6/6/8/0/6680387/kuntnerandagnarsson2010_joa_darwinsbarkspidersmall.pdf

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"The Worms Crawl In, the Worms Crawl Out." Elementary: The Sixth Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Aug. 20, 2018.

Earth and Space News

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Silk From Darwin's Bark Spiders on Elementary's The Worms Crawl In

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