Download - 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.