Milestone: An academic paper has cited Spider Silk. We wrote Spider Silk for nonscientists, and it's been gratifying to receive reviews praising our book as "conversational," "easy to read," and "difficult to put down." But it's also great to know that other biologists recognize the validity of the science supporting our narrative. Although spiders make and use silk in unique ways, many other arthropods also use silk for various purposes. Miki Kanazawa, Ken Sahara, and Yutaka Saito of Hokkaido University in Japan have discovered that female Stigmaeopsis longus, a species of social spider mites, use silk threads to clean their communal nests. If you're interested in what it might be like to live in a highly humid, capsule-like nest with tens of others of your kind, the eye-opening introduction to their paper gives a glimpse of some of the grittier aspects. But of course, if you were this self-regarding co-author, the true frisson would kick in at footnote #27.
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