Exercise:

Spiders
There are spider webs in the highland rain forest of Madagascar that are so huge, they make you wonder if the creatures
that built them are big enough to have a starring role in a horror movie.

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'They are no bigger than some of the spiders you can find in gardens in America or Europe,' said Dr. Ingi Agnarsson, a
biologist. He and his research partner, Dr. Matjaz Kuntner, believe the webs are made by several closely related spider
species. All these species are smaller than the thumb of an adult human being.

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These are orb spiders, which make large, round webs that look a lot like the ones people decorate with at Halloween. First,
the spider will spin a silk thread between two objects, like tree branches. This is called a bridge line.

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These spiders, all of which are in the genus Caerostris, have not yet been fully studied by scientists and exist only on the
island of Madagascar. Dr. Kuntner and Dr. Agnarsson plan to travel there in February to study them extensively.

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The two facts are probably related, Dr. Kuntner said. Web-building spiders tend to use a lot of energy to make their webs,
and orb spiders have to make bigger webs than most. The silk would have to be strong to hold up for long enough for the
spider to catch food.

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'We have no idea how they make these webs,' said Dr. Kuntner. 'How might they get those silk threads across the river? Do
they send out a thread to float across the river and entangle in a tree on the other side? Probably not,' said Dr. Agnarsson.
'The distance is too far, and it is likely that the thread would break and fall into the river.'

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One of the big questions the scientists want to answer is if the spiders' prey is as extraordinary in size as their webs are. It
seems reasonable to wonder if a big web is meant to catch a big dinner. If it is, what do they do with it once it is caught?

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They are both arachnologists, professors of Arachnology, which is the scientific study of spiders and related animals such
as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, and harvestmen, collectively called arachnids.

National Geographic

The Paragraphs

A The spider makes the bridge line stronger by traveling back and forth along the line, adding more silk to it. Then it
adds a line that will help anchor the web to the ground or another object. It continues adding anchor lines until the
web looks like a bicycle wheel with spokes.
B The biologists will also collect some spiders to study back home in their labs. Dr. Agnarsson works at the University
of Puerto Rico. Dr. Kuntner works at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
C This species of spider features an elongated black body and red legs, with females featuring prominent yellow
markings on their abdomen, and they feed mainly on flying insects.
D How huge? Big enough to wrap around a VW Beetle, that's how huge. But instead of being the size of the giant
spiders in the Harry Potter books, they're more like the spiders in Harry's cupboard under the stairs - a little on the
big side, but nothing out of the ordinary.
E There are two more things the biologists would like to ascertain on their trip, besides size, that make these spiders
extraordinary. They build their webs over running water, such as streams and rivers, and the silk they use to make
their webs is stronger than that of other spiders.
F The scientists are going to Madagascar to study these spiders to find out. They will have a team of people to watch
the spider webs day and night to see if the spiders show up to build or repair webs. They may even damage some of
the webs to see if a spider comes out to fix them.
G Clear understanding of this diversity is critical to conserving these giant spiders and their habitat in the rapidly
diminishing forests of Madagascar. A paper describing this research was recently published.
H An orb spiders entire web is large, but the bridge line is especially enormous. Those can reach up to 14 meters,
stretching across flowing rivers and streams. The spiders have no obvious way to get their bridge lines across the
rivers and streams.