neville park<p>New research from the Hebets Lab at University of Nebraska Lincoln: _Agelenopsis_ grass spiders in noisy urban environments weave webs with built-in noise dampening—as opposed to their rural cousins, who built more sensitive webs when researchers turned up the volume. </p><p>From the NYT article linked below:</p><p>> “While animal sensory systems can, and do, certainly adapt over evolutionary time to changing environmental conditions, this takes time,” Dr. Hebets said. “Behavioral changes, however, can be immediate.” </p><p>This offers an intriguing tangent: webs are part of a spider's sensory apparatus but are constantly re-built, and behavioural plasticity lets them "evolve" much faster—an evolution you can't track by looking at physical traits alone.</p><p>Anecdotally, _Agelenopsis_ are masters at adapting their flat sheet webs to even the unlikeliest urban environments! So it's not a surprise they are adaptable in other ways as well.</p><p>Paper: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.041" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.</span><span class="invisible">041</span></a> :ClosedAccess: </p><p>NYT article: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/science/spiders-webs-noise-pollution.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/2025/03/22/science</span><span class="invisible">/spiders-webs-noise-pollution.html</span></a> // <a href="https://archive.ph/Mu7KJ" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">archive.ph/Mu7KJ</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p><a href="https://flipping.rocks/tags/Arachnews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Arachnews</span></a> <a href="https://flipping.rocks/tags/spiders" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>spiders</span></a> <a href="https://flipping.rocks/tags/Araneae" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Araneae</span></a> <a href="https://flipping.rocks/tags/Agelenidae" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Agelenidae</span></a></p>