{"id":5105,"date":"2015-07-08T08:43:37","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T08:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=5105"},"modified":"2015-07-08T08:43:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T08:43:37","slug":"spiders-known-to-fly-also-adept-sailors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/spiders-known-to-fly-also-adept-sailors\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiders, Known to Fly, Also Adept Sailors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

\"Spider<\/a>
Spider behavior on water surface. Sailing behavior: linyphiid (a, c) and tetragnathid (b, d) spiders moving on the water surface with their legs (a, b) or abdomen (c, d) used as sails. When the abdomen was used the behavior was referred to as upside-down sailing. A spider can sail stably even on turbulent sea salt water. Anchoring behavior: use of silk as anchor to slow down or stop movement on water surface by linyphiids (which dropped the anchoring silk) (e) and the tetragnathid (which dragged the anchoring silk after it caught a floating object) (f). Each scale bar represents 1 mm. (Image: Hayashi et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spiders have been known to fly, using their silk to”ballon” to new environments.<\/span><\/p>\n

They are also adept sailors, using the wind to travel long distances and colonize new lands, according to research published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOnce on the water surface, spiders react to the wind by raising their legs as sails,\u201d the international team of scientists found. \u201cSailing spiders smoothly and stealthily slide on the water surface without leaving any turbulence\u2026 The spider releases silk on water surface and slows down its movement, or stops, against the prevailing wind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The scientists, from the University of Nottingham, the Natural History Museum in London, as well as Japanese and Spanish institutions, observed 325 individual spiders from 21 different species.<\/span><\/p>\n

They found a half-dozen techniques the spiders use to travel along the surface of water, including using their abdomens as a kind of sail while doing a handstand-like posture on the water.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sailing spiders were also the adventurous arthropods most likely to want to \u201cballoon,\u201d according to the researchers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ballooning and sailing techniques are used by young spiders or those arachnids that are living in a stressed environment, scientists believe. The ballooning technique became the talk of the scientific world in May when a small town in South Australia was covered in baby spider webbing that has become known locally as \u201cAngel Hair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The sailing and ballooning methods of travel probably explains why spiders of various species are among the first to colonize desolate places such as reclaimed lands, and volcanic islands, the scientists said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spiders have been known to fly, using their silk to”ballon” to new environments. They are also adept sailors, using the wind to travel long distances and colonize new lands, according to research published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. \u201cOnce on the water surface, spiders react to the wind by raising their legs as sails,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider-225x300.jpg",225,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",428,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",451,600,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",368,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",270,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",49,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",567,755,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",72,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/bt1506_seth_spider.jpg",150,200,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}