In nearly every living species, temperature influences physiological and biological processes in the body. Spiders are ectothermic organisms, meaning they are unable to regulate their body temperatures relative to their environment. Because of this, changes in temperature can have a large impact on their metabolic rate and overall activity (Barghusen et al). It has been found that even winter active spiders will make less effective webs or no webs at all at temperatures 2° colder than the temperature they are accustomed to. Having a less effective, or no, web greatly reduced feeding, which could be detrimental for spiders (Aitchison 1984). Since web production is a large part of spider activity and survival, we decided to focus our project on how varying temperatures influence web production. Past research has found that spiders in lower temperatures tend to use less spiral silk than spiders in warmer temperatures (Vollrath et al). Our project focuses on how temperature influence the weight of webs.
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