| Water spider (Argyroneta aquatica), is currently the world’s only one kind of spiderthat habitat in streams, ponds, swamps and other water bodies and prey on small fish,shrimp, and insect larvae, and is widely distributed in Eurasia. Since the1980s, with theerosion of urbanization in Europe, Asia and other countries, acts such asover-exploitation of vegetation has resulting dissertations of streams, ponds and swamps,and has speed up the extinction rate of water spider’s habitat, before people really beganto know this creature, the survival status of the water spider has started to become notoptimistic. Water spider’s life is extremely dependent on the use of spider silk, and theunderwater environment has directly caused the differences of silk versus that of theterrestrial spider. In this paper, aspects of water spider silk gland morphology, structureof spider silk protein gene and trachea systems were studied. Proceeding from the originof the spider silk, combining with molecular data to analysis water spider silk protein,and other common terrestrial spider silk gland morphology were compared with waterspider silk gland to reach further understanding of the water spider. This paper alsoprovides information for better understanding of these particular spider taxa, syntheticspider silk and so on.Specific results are as follows:(1)5silk gland of water spider were observed and photographed under thedissecting microscope, which are, Major Ampullate Gland, Minor Ampullate Gland,Tubuliform Gland, Pyriform Gland and Aciniform Gland, all these glands are commontypes of silk gland;(2) The water spider silk glands and the common garden spider silk glands arecompared and found that the lack of Aggregate Glands and Flagelliform Glands in waterspiders, yet who possesses the Tubuliform Glands which are not exist in garden spiders.The common silk glands between water spiders with garden spiders are MajorAmpullate Glands, Minor Ampullate Glands, Pyriform Glands and Aciniform Glands.Compared with the garden spider, Major Ampullate Glands and Minor AmpullateGlands in water spider are not as complicated, yet Pyriform Glands and AciniformGlands are equal in numbers and gland morphology. Through further analysis, the moredeveloped Tubuliform Gland Silk of water spider played an important role inconstructing the diving bell, which provided an explanation for the advance ofTubuliform Glands, yet this point also consisted a comparison with other terrestrialspiders who use only Tubuliform Gland silk in making egg cocoons, which reflects thespecial nature of the water spider, and also raised another way to use Tubuliform Glandsilk;(3) Designed a pair of universal primers for some spider groups, and haveamplified three Major Ampullate Spidroin1(MaSp1) genes from water spider, Agelenasilvatica and Uroctea compactilis;(4) Used downloaded spidroin data from the NCBI database to construct a Bayesian tree, and a total number of220sequences from10kinds of spidorin genesfrom23families,36genera and52species of spiders were used to conduct aphylogenetic analysis, which confirmed the sequences obtained are MaSp1genesequence fragments. And found a possible evolve process from the origin fibroin toAciniform Spidoin(AcSp) to Pyrifoin Spidroin(PySp) to TubuliformSpidroin(TuSp/Cysp) to Ampullate Spidoin to Flagelliform Spidorin(Flag) to AggregateSpidroin(AgSp).(5) The structure of the water spider trachea system were observed, and have beencompared with three kinds of common terrestrial spiders, Arctosa ningboensis, Psechrussenoculatus and garden spider(Araneus ventricosus). The trachea system of waterspiders were found in the form of two cylinders, which many small tube extendingforwardly into the cephalothorax and backwardly into the abdomen from the ends of thecylinders. Tracheal structures in other three spiders are constructed in four simple tubes.The opening of water spider’s trachea system is closer to the book lungs and genitalfurrow, which is different from other three species whose openings are more close to thespinnerets, and has revealed a higher usage of the trachea system. Through observation,water spider trachea systems were found to own the most developed structure, whichindicates that their metabolism levels and exercise levels also exceeded the commonterrestrial spider species. |
PDF Full Text Request