Safety is increasingly important in cobweb spiders based on life history

Detritus-based, bell-shaped cobwebs are an ideal model to research the plasticity of web architecture due to clearly separate defense and foraging components. We performed a thorough field investigation on the web architectures of Campanicola campanulata to research its cobweb architecture variation during the growth process and analyzed the energy trade-offs between foraging and defense at different developmental stages. The results indicated that as female C. campanulata grew, they dedicated more energy to defense and less energy to foraging, while males dedicated less energy to both defense and foraging through the growth period. We hypothesize that cobweb spiders dedicate an increasing amount of energy to safety based on evidence obtained from their life-history. Meanwhile, we present a new model to investigate web architecture variation and provide a new framework to quantify the energy allocation between foraging and predator defense for web-building spiders.