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Native to the western United States, the Severed Sphere Weaver is a spider so small and fragile it can snuggle up on your finger. However, despite its tiny body, there are many complexities to its design. Eight slender legs move with the grace of a dexterous dancer. Three claws help him maneuver around his slender house. Eight eyes perceive the world, however, in the dark, these spiders rely on touch to build their intricate nest.
It is this complexity and ability to blindly build that attracted researcher Andrew Gordus, senior author of a new study on web weaving methodology. He works in the Department of Biology at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and was fascinated by the complex structures built by creatures with such small brains. “After seeing an impressive spider web, I thought, ‘If you went to the zoo and saw a chimpanzee build this, you’ll think this is one amazing and impressive chimpanzee,” he said. But for a creature smaller than a fingertip, the feat was even more astounding.
So, Gordus set about researching the inner workings of spiders to determine how they manipulate their impressive structures. Using technology, including artificial intelligence, his team has successfully mapped the dance of the spider for the first time.
Artificial intelligence tracking the movement of spiders
The problem with tracking the construction of the web lies in both its complexity and the timing. Broken Orb Weavers build at night, creating an obstacle for Gordus and his team. To solve this problem, they installed an infrared light space and cameras with the ability to record infrared light. The cameras recorded at high frame rates to capture the movement of each individual foot, creating an enormous amount of data.
This is problem number two. “Even if you are videotaping it, it’s a lot of problems that need to be tracked over a long period of time among many people,” said Abel Korver, PhD student and lead author of the article. Six spiders were included in the study over several nights. These are millions of frames that require annotation. The dataset nightmare for students is becoming a treasure trove for the AI algorithm.
Instead of digging through images, they developed a computer program to track each individual spider’s paw, as well as their relationship to each other, in order to record the spider’s pose. The results were great. Artificial intelligence was able to predict which phase of the construction process a spider was involved in by simply reading the position of its legs.
After examining the data processed by artificial intelligence, the researchers found interesting results. All the spiders in their study acted more or less the same. The dance was the same for all kinds. This suggests that the rules are encoded in their brains. Reacting to the results, Gordus said, “Now we want to know how these rules are encoded at the neuronal level.”
Spider brains
The ability of tiny creatures like spiders to create such complex networks is exemplified by something in biology known as Haller’s rule. It says that the smaller the creature, the larger the proportion of its brain compared to its body. Thus, although the brains of spiders are much smaller, they retain more capacity than one would expect from their size. This evolutionary principle demonstrates the vitality of the brain.
This is a process known as brain miniaturization. Like technological advances that allow more complex computing power to fit into smaller and smaller devices, small brains shrink as they evolve. William Eberhard, a spider researcher at the Tropical Research Institute, explained to Scientific American how the spider brain began to invent space in smaller arachnids. “In tiny ones, they went into the legs, and the sternum bulged out, and it was full of the brain,” he said.
To investigate this phenomenon, Eberhard studied spiders that create webs of various sizes. He wanted to see if larger spiders make fewer mistakes due to their larger brains. The results surprised him. Regardless of the size of the spider, or even the space in which they spun their webs, the error rate remained constant.
Haller’s rule applies to all species, ensuring that the complexity of the brain is maintained despite environmental pressure reducing the overall size of the animal. It works in many ways, from thinning the skull to shrinking the size of the brain cells and the axons that connect them. Or, in the case of spiders, the adaptation of the medulla to another part of the body.
Following their recent research, Gordus and his team hope to continue their research by looking into the brains of spiders as they begin their task. Through various drugs, they want to observe brain circuits to determine which switches correspond to each part of the networking process. By studying the functions of this small but complex brain, researchers can unravel some of the mysteries of our own minds, as well as offer interesting solutions for computer scientists who increasingly look to nature for inspiration.
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