Catherine L. Craig Oxford University Press (2003) pp. 256 ISBN 0195129164 (hbk) £37.50 (hbk)
Spiders offer experimental opportunities to researchers from a wide array of disciplines: physicists and biochemists are interested in the physical properties of the silk strands all spiders spin, ecologists find them useful in examining diverse problems, from predator–prey interactions to life history, and evolutionary biologists find them ideal for studying speciation and the evolution of mating behavior. Catherine Craig has, in this slim volume, set out to explore the interaction between the web-building spider,the silk it produces and the prey it captures. In this endeavor, she has collected concepts from an extremely diverse array of disciplines, ranging from physical biochemistry to insect neurophysiology to evolutionary ecology. Sadly, the attempt to draw together so many aspects of spider biology and their remarkable web structures, while laudable, is poorly executed and left this reader frustrated.
The first chapter...