An obscure study of stabilimenta

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. I have a fascination with writing spiders, the ones that weave a zigzag pattern, stabilimentum, into parts of their webs. The theory for why that has some research to back it up it up is that it keeps birds from colliding with webs causing major repair damage for the spider to do. One somewhat obscure study was done on the island of Guam, originally there were no snakes there, but in WW II some snakes unintentionally got there. Those snakes have have decimated the native bird species, who evolved without that threat. Maybe because of fewer bird strikes, spiders there now put smaller patterns in their webs. A U.S. scientist made fake stabilimenta and when he put these on existing spider webs the results were fewer birds running into and destroying those webs.