Golden Silk Orb-Weaver

Trichonephila clavipes (formerly Nephila clavipes) is the most familiar of about 60 species in family Nephilidae — the golden silk orb-weavers. The female (about 4 cm body length, 12 cm leg span) is one of the largest orb-weavers in the New World; the male is dramatically smaller (4-6 mm) — sexual size dimorphism among the most extreme in the spider world. The web is enormous: typical adult webs span 1-2 meters across, often hung between trees and across forest paths in the southeastern US, Central America, and South America. The silk is naturally gold-colored — the pigment is structural, derived from quinones in the silk proteins, and is hypothesized to attract pollinators (which the spider then catches as bonus prey) and to camouflage the web against the dappled gold light of jungle understory. The dragline silk is mechanically remarkable: tensile strength of 1,000-1,500 MPa (kevlar is around 3,500 MPa, but spider silk has a far higher strength-to-weight ratio when density is normalized), and elasticity allowing 30%+ stretch before breaking. In 2009, designer Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley produced the only major spider-silk textile in modern history: a four-meter cape woven from the silk of 1.2 million Madagascan T. inaurata, harvested live and released. The cape now resides in the V&A Museum, London. Spider silk's strength-to-weight ratio has driven decades of biomimicry research, including transgenic silkworms and bacterial production of recombinant spider silk proteins.