spider team final paper 2012

7/31/2019 Spider Team Final Paper 2012

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2012 Spider Silk Project

By,

Winston MacDonald

Alexis Stickney

Foster Bentham

2012 Spider Team


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Introduction

The Rainforest Project is a project focused on educating students

through a non-profit program lead by Formans, Wendy Welshmans,

founded in 1991. Through this project the research done helps slow

deforestation and increases the populations knowledge of slashing and

burning down rainforests. There are a group of 12-15 students brought

together and divided up into specific groups based on their skill and ability

to work together. Those groups are spider silk, reptiles and amphibians,

ortho odo, moths, and birds. Once assigned a group those teams start unique

research on their specific group. This class goes far beyond the work of just

a classroom setting, the students work with teachers from outside Forman

and travel to Costa Rica for 2 weeks in March. The improvements in the

students that participate in this course are incomparable. Their skills in so

many areas are remarkably improved and the outcome is beyond beneficial.

This year marks the 20th year of the Forman school rainforest project and the

10th year of the Forman school rainforest projects arachnid project also

known as The Spider Silk Project.

The arachnid projects focus is on the Nephila Clavipes, the golden

orb weaver, offers potential scientific wisdom which opens new doors to

innovate change around the world. The reason for this is because of this


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spiders silk, which is the strongest natural fiber in the world. Since this silk

has such unique characteristics how the silk can be used can benefit future

generations and continue to be a guiding in scientific innovations. The hope

is to create a sustainable and renewable resource for the people of Costa

Rica as an alternative to farming which only damages the ecosystem and

after a few years leaves the land depleted of all nutrients

The arachnid project in the past has focused on the research of the

Nephila Clavipes, which is found in the southeastern most portion of the

United States and in South America. Usually in this species of spider the

females have a range of 24mm to 40mm and the females are 5 to 6 times

larger than males. Despite this spider that can fit in your palm this spiders

silk is, oz. per oz., six times the tensile strength of steel. The strongest type

of silk they produce is the spiders dragline silk; this is used for the outer

original length and is almost weightless. All of these characteristics combine

to create a flexible, yet super strong material. Such a natural material seems

to be unfathomable and is part of the reason why our research is viewed as

revolutionary.

In the past researchers have said that it is impossible to farm the

Nephilas on a large scale and that that they are very territorial and even

cannibalistic. Past teams have found this to be far from the truth. There


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have been very few reported cases of cannibalism and we get up to 50 of

them living in the same area peacefully.

The spider silk project started off as an attempt to use the silk of the

golden orb weaver to create an ultra strong reinforcing fiber. This never

caught on for large-scale production because of the cost and how difficult it

is to keep a large number in captivity. After a few years of trial and error the

spider silk team has finally gotten its project in to the air.

The teams started off using large wheels to collect the silk on and this

worked well but it took a lot of effort to cut the silk in to pieces and also the

fact that it takes 3 people to operate. Recently though the teams have built

new wheels to collect silk on that are more accurate and require only 2

people to run. This is the wheel we are planning on using this year. Thebig hope of the spider team was to create a cheaper reinforcing fabric that

has spider silk built in. This did not go amazingly because the silk took a

long time to collect and it couldnt be collected in mass amounts. We have

turned to the medical industry in recent years because the silk is natural and

can be used as sutures. Another reason spider silk is ideal is because a

human body wont reject it.

Hypothesis


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The goal of our research is to find out what effects the strength and

the color of the spider silk. In the past teams have determined that there is a

correlation between the weather and the strength and elasticity of the silk.

We want to find out the reason for this and the predictability of the silk. If

we can find these factors out we will be able to present our findings to a

larger audience of companies. (A company looking for a stronger but less

elastic silk should take the silk during a certain time frame but another

looking for a more elastic but weaker silk should get silk from another time

frame)

Methods

The process of silk extraction requires precise and cautious steps to

receive a viable sample of silk. The past years have refined the methods to

reach our ultimate goal of creating a sustainable resource that can be

collected by the people of Costa Rica with minimal training. This year we

felt that the current method of collection is the best, not only because of the

quality of the samples that were collected but also because of the short

learning curve that was experienced by both our team and also the families

that we employed.


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Equipment

1. Extraction Boxes with aluminum spokes, removable handles, digitaltimers/rotation counters- four of each with replacement parts

2. Cardboard silk collection cards- over ?? many3. Spider collection jars with padding approximately 104. Tool Kit - pliers, Philips head screw driver, wrench, Allen key5. Batteries - replacements for timers, headlamps, moth traps,6.Note Pads - three7. Bug/moth Trap- one8. Sling shot- one9. Head lamp - one10.Duct tape- multiple rolls11.Weather station- two for accuracy12.Light meter- on

Steps for silking

This year we took down all of the spiders locations and gave them all

numbers. These numbers are crucial because they make sure we get the

same spider in the same web every time we collected them. Also we do this

to make sure that we dont silk a spider more than once a day. After we

extract, silk from the Nephilias spiders we will compare our data to the


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strength and elasticity results of the extracted spider silk and narrow down

which factors affect the strength and color of the silk the most

The team members also have designated positions, which will reduce

variables in the collection process. One person handles the spiders during

the collection process, designated as A. The next person is the one who

turns the wheel, and resets the timer, they are designated as B. The last

person collects and writes down all the data, they are designated as C.

Step 1 - team member A, who uses cupped hands to make sure that

the spider and the web are not harmed, carefully takes the spider off its web.

Step 2 - Team member C then takes the light reading, making sure

that the meter is set to Klux. They also take down the spider number, time,

and other specified variables.

Step 3 - The spider is taken to the wheel and is coerced in to laying a

sticky disk on to team member As hand by using the hand over hand

method. The hand over hand method is when the handler places their

hands in a tilted down position in order to simulate the sensation of falling

for the spider. The spider will, therefore, lay a sticky disk on the handlers

hand. This sticky disk and the dragline silk are wrapped around the spokes

of the wheel.


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Step 4 - Team member B then starts turning the wheel making sure to

keep a consistent speed and constantly making sure that the silk has not

broken. This is most easily done with a headlamp shining at the silk, which

illuminates it. They keep turning the wheel until the silk gets broken twice

or 3 minutes of silking elapses, whichever comes first.

Step 5 - Team member C then takes down the distance, duration,

color of the silk, and the weather details. They also make sure that the

counter gets reset.

Step 6 - The spider is finally placed back on to its web while making

sure that the spider is returned safely to its own web.

Step 7 - The silk is then carefully cut off the wheel and is placed on to

one of the pages in a silk book making sure to only touch the ends of the silk

to minimize human contact with the silk. The silk is then attached to the

book using small pieces of tape that are around of an inch wide. The

necessary information is then filled out in the book and the process is

repeated until the silk book is filled.

Data recorded

1. Temperature2. Barometric pressure,


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3. Wind speed,4. Wind direction5. Rainfall,6. Lumen/lux7. Due point. .

Feeding of spiders

When the spiders are silked they loose a lot of energy. Because of

this, every night we have to feed our spiders to help them regain energy. We

do this by collecting moths that the Moth Team caught but didnt need. Also

we set our own bug and moth traps, which makes sure we have enough to

feed them. After they are caught we place them in to the spiders webs and

watch the spiders eat. We must be careful to not put dead moths or ones that

are to big because the spider wont eat them and it just creates a problem that

they need to cut out of their web.

Outside collection/ farms

As a continued effort to test out the effectiveness and simplicity of out

techniques the past years teams have gone to farms and hire the families to

silk for them. Also this helps out the families with a large boost to their

income with the average income being around $4000 a year. We will


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continue this and we will be visiting two farms to have them collect silk for

us. They will be collecting for 7 days and be paid $20 a day for a total of

$144. One of these farms we have been going to for a few years now and

provides very consistent and well documented silk. The silk they collect are

of or above our standards. The other farm is a new one that we have not

visited before. We will be approaching this seconded farm cautiously

because we dont know weather they will provide as consistent data or silk.

Data and analysis

This year we are calling our testing inconclusive because we were

only able to test around 10% of our silk because of time constraints. What


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we wanted to test for this year was strength compared for color and see if

color had any effect on the strength or elasticity.

Observations

We were able to observe active camouflage in the silk that the spiders

produce. Our hypothesis that we formed was that the spiders changed the

color of their silk from a golden color that matches the sun, to a clear/white

color that matches the color of the clouds. We observed that when it was

darker and cloudier out that the silk would a whiter shade. When the sun

was shining we got more golden silk. We cannot prove or dis prove this at

his time due to a small sample size which was not extensive enough to come

to any conclusions with.

Future recommendations

We recommend that the team next year measure there silk in number

of strands instead of feet. This is because strands are a much better

representation of the quality of the samples. We also recommend that we

should bring our own tools for fixing the shack then using the Rara Avis

tools. We suggest that future teams look further in to the color of the silk and

take the work we did this year as a jumping off point. We strongly advise

getting a system of keeping track of all the spiders and their web locations.

This makes certain that spiders wont be put back in to the wrong webs.


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Conclusion

This year we got over 34787.017 feet of silk. This was more than any

team in the past had ever collected. This was largely due to the new wheel

that last years team had created. The wheel worked very efficiently and

made the process as simple as possible, while being compact and

mechanically simple. We did not encounter any major problems with the

wheel, which shows that it is a very good design.

We employed two families to help collect silk this year. Pedro Pablo

who is a dairy farmer, who worked for 7 days, was able to collect 6765.237

feet of silk. We found that the system we had was easily learned and that it

was simple enough that someone who had never handled the spiders could

silk them with minimal practice. This further shows that the project can

become a sustainable resource for the people of Costa Rica. Davida, who

was the second person we employed has been silking for a few years now,

and has provided very good and consistent samples for us to test.

spider team final paper 2012

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