When we see cobwebs, we clean them up immediately. These spider traps may not be as important to us but there's a new experiment that these pesky things may be vital for scientists.
The spider's lair or the sticky web holds traces of the prey's DNA. Based on a recent study, these DNA samples can be intensified in a laboratory.
This means that a spider web is not 'empty.' It can indicate clues to scientists what spider made the web and the kind of prey that got trapped in its lair.
This kind of data may not be as important to mere humans like us but it can be a source of relevant information for scientists who study in different fields. Take researchers who study conservation ecology to pest management. These guys need to find details about the exact species of spiders that build webs in a specific area as well information about their prey, said Charles C.Y. Xu, the study lead author, and a graduate student in the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme (MEME) in evolutionary biology.
"There's a variety of different methods to study [spiders]," Xu told Live Science.
Nowadays, genetic sequencing is a process that is not costly. It can allow other methods of collecting samples and gathering information about the spiders and the unfortunate creatures that fall prey to their trap. It involves ways that do not require scientists to kill the species.
"In order to study DNA, you have to first make a lot of it," Xu said. "So we used primers, which are single-stranded DNA fragments that target particular regions of DNA that we want to study."
Since 2007, scientists all over the world have been in pursuit of creating a full database of DNA bar codes associated with thousands of species. However, Xu said that barcoding for DNA spider webs have never been done before this study.
