Welcome to the homepage of the Junior Research Group Spider Silk! If you are interested in our research, feel free to browse the homepage and/or to contact us.
P.s. wir sprechen ebenfalls Deutsch, auch wenn die Homepage auf Englisch ist
News
03.02.2023
Interested in what’s happening at the molecular level when scaling down spider silk? See our latest publication Physico-chemical properties of functionally adhesive spider silk nanofibres
07.11.2022
Just got the news that a new biomimetic publication with two our cooperation partners is out.
11.10.2022
Lucas published a wonderful paper about the influence of prey’s cuticular hydrocarbons onto the capture threads mechanics.
09.09.2022
Just returned from the European Arachnological conference in Greifswald. As always: it has been a pleasure to see you all again and meet new people with fascinating research topics!
17.08.2022
Visiting the Museum König with the whole group
09.08.2022
I was invited to co-edit a special issue about Advances in Soft Matter Biological Adhesives. Interested to join?
04.08.2022
BioCombs4Nanofibers-Project meeting in Berlin
30.03.2022
Spring is coming, so we made the most of the blooming trees in front of our institute
10.03.2022
A new publication about the interaction of cuticular hydrocarbons (so the outmost layer on insects) with cribellate capture threads has been published.
07.01.2022
Happy new year to all of you! To have the best start into a new year, two student research assistants, Julia and Marieke, joined us recently. Welcome to the team!
29.11.2021
Congrats to Marco, he published his first paper about the climatic influences onto the anti-adhesion of the calamistrum.
05.10.2021
Several new people joined our group and we want to welcome all of them (though a little late for some)! See our updated “Team” page for all the new faces.
Also new publications have been added. Some of them are not even about spiders…
27.01.2021
I’m very happy to announce the newest publication Cribellate thread production as model for spider’s spinneret kinematics of our group!
01.07.2020
A warm welcome to Marco Meyer! He joined our team today as a new PhD student to study and biomimetically transfer the nanofibre processing of cribellate spiders.
21.06.2020
The review article “Laser engineering of biomimetic surface” as been accepted and published by Material Science and Engineering: R.
16.03.2020
Interested in the latest results of our group? With our cooperation partners, we shed light onto the anti-adhesive properties of the calamistrum in the just accepted manuscript Biomimetic Combs as Anti-Adhesive Tools to Manipulate Nanofibers
02.03.2020
Lucas Jäger joined our team as new PhD student to study the influence of surface structure and chemistry onto the adhesion of cribellate threads. Welcome!
04.02.2020
New insights into the mechanics of the cribellate thread of Psechrus: Uncoiling springs promote mechanical functionality of spider cribellate silk
14.01.2020
Anna-Christin Joel became a member of the Junges Kolleg of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.
21.11.2019
A new publication of our research group is online. The southern house spider produces crazy cribellate threads: Small behavioral adaptations enable more effective prey capture by producing 3D-structured spider threads
01.10.2019
Our group joined the Project “BioComb4Nanofibers”, founded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. For more information about the project, see e.g. our researchgate page: Researchgate BioComb4Nanofibers
28.03.2019
Margret Weißbach and Anna-Christin Joel published a review in Integrative & Comparative Biology: Same principles but different purposes: passive fluid handling throughout the animal kingdom
15.02.2019
Margret Weißbach and Anna-Christin Joel are shown in the News, attending the international congress of arachnology in Christchurch (NZ). Check out 1 news now.
10.01.2019
Anna-Christin Joel was interviewed by Laura Rohrbeck from the WDR.
25.11.2018
Margret Weißbach won the second prize presenting her poster “Biological processing of fibres: How the spider’s spinneret morphology influences the complex shape of cribellate capture threads” at the Phylogenetic Symposium in Tübingen.
23.10.2018
Margret Weißbach got a RWTH Scholarship for her Doctoral Studies. Congrats and welcome to the team!