Spider web in Late Cretaceous French amber (Vendée):The contribution of 3D image microscopy

Jean-Paul Saint Martin (1) , Simona Saint Martin (1) , Susanne Bolte (2) , Didier Néraudeau (3)

1 CR2P - Centre de recherche sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements
2 IFR-BI - Institut de Biologie Intégrative
3 GR - Géosciences Rennes

Late Cretaceous amber from La Garnache (France, Vendée) contains filamentous networksthat have all the characteristics of spider webs. Using methods of classic and confocalmicroscopy, the web architecture and the thread structure are described. The geometryof the webs preserved in amber is presented in 3D imaging. Unlike most of the spiderwebs identified in amber, there are no regular radiating webs growing in two dimensionscharacteristic of the well-known orb web. A number of the characters would correspondto the apparently irregular organization of cob-type web or sheet web. By using confocalmicroscopy, we can highlight the preserved autofluorescence of spider silk proteins andnew characters are proposed to identify the spider webs or fragments of webs in amber.

Mots clés: Spider web; Amber; Autofluorescence; Late Cretaceous; France

Domaines: Sciences de la Terre

Jean-Paul Saint Martin, Simona Saint Martin, Susanne Bolte, Didier Néraudeau. Spider web in Late Cretaceous French amber (Vendée):The contribution of 3D image microscopy. Comptes Rendus. Palevol, 2014, 13 (5), pp.463-472. ⟨10.1016/j.crpv.2014.03.005⟩. ⟨insu-01025117⟩