draft

Our data displays a negative trend between the weight of the spiders and the thickness of their silk. The heaviest spider had an average silk thickness of .758 μm which is the smallest average thickness of silk. Due to the negative trend between weight and thickness, our hypothesis is not supported because heavier spiders do not produce a thicker silk. Our results had inconsistent web thicknesses so in some cases the average is not representative of the entirety of the silk.

Our research could be improved by developing a more standard method of silk measurements, Within each cluster of silk we obtained from the three webs, there were multiple individual strands of various thicknesses. Different strands of silk could represent different types of silk, such as silk used for web production to catch food or silk that is made as a byproduct of spider function. Identifying different types of web produced by the spiders and only quantifying the same type of web would potentially give more solid data that would better indicate if a correlation between weight and silk thickness existed. We also had to move the spiders around to different locations because we had to bring them to the lab in order to use a scale and the microscope. This means the spiders may have been in states of distress that could cause disruptions in silk production. To better future research, keeping the spiders in the same location throughout the experiment might yield better results because the spiders would be in a constant controlled environment.