Nanostructured fibers as a versatile photonic platform: radiative cooling and waveguiding through transverse Anderson localization.

Broadband high reflectance in nature is often the result of randomly, three-dimensionally structured materials. This study explores unique optical properties associated with one-dimensional nanostructures discovered in silk cocoon fibers of the comet moth, . The fibers are populated with a high density of air voids randomly distributed across the fiber cross-section but are invariant along the fiber.

Broad patterns of speciation are correlated with the evolution of new silk proteins in spiders but not in the lepidoptera.

Silk synthesis is an ancestral character of both the Lepidoptera and the Araneae. Araneae evolution is marked by an increased commitment to a silk-producing physiology. At least three major Araneae speciation events are correlated with the evolution of new silk-producing glands and new silk proteins.

Comparative architecture of silks, fibrous proteins and their encoding genes in insects and spiders.

The known silk fibroins and fibrous glues are thought to be encoded by members of the same gene family. All silk fibroins sequenced to date contain regions of long-range order (crystalline regions) and/or short-range order (non-crystalline regions). All of the sequenced fibroin silks (Flag or silk from flagelliform gland in spiders; Fhc or heavy chain fibroin silks produced by Lepidoptera larvae) are made up of hierarchically organized, repetitive arrays of amino acids.

EVOLUTIONARY SHIFTS IN THE SPECTRAL PROPERTIES OF SPIDER SILKS.

We measured the reflectance properties of unpigmented silks spun by a systematic array of primitive (Deinopoidea) and derived (Araneoidea) aerial, web-spinning spiders, as well as silks spun by Araneomorphae and Mygalomorphae spiders that do not spin aerial webs. Our data show that all of the primitive aerial web spinners produce catching silks with a spectral peak in the ultraviolet (UV), and cladistic analysis suggests that high UV reflection is the primitive character state for silk spectral properties. In contrast, all of the derived aerial web spinners produce silks that are spectrally flat or characterized by reduced reflectance in the UV.