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Adhesive Secretions in Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones)

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Biological Adhesives

Abstract

Opiliones, colloquially also known as harvestmen or daddy longlegs, are arachnids capable of producing and releasing a variety of secretions that are used to deter predators. The fact that a large fraction of these animals also produce efficient glues for trapping prey, gluing eggs to substrates, attaching soil particles to their body or eggs for camouflage purposes, or transferring sperm, is rather unknown. Not only the physical properties of these glues are interesting, but also the supplementary cuticular structures, that work hand in hand with the secretions to produce highly efficient adhesive mechanisms. Here we give an overview on the occurrence, properties, and associated structures of adhesive secretions in harvestmen and discuss their biological functions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Glauco Machado for sharing his discovery of glue in cosmetid nymphs. We like to thank John Uribe, Jörg Pageler, Arthur Anker, Siegfried Huber, Bruno Buzatto, Gustavo Requena, and Jochen Martens for their enthusiastic help and permission to reproduce their photographs. Thanks to Hay Wijnhoven for his kind permission to reuse his excellent drawings of clavate setae. J. O. Wolff was supported by a PhD scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation and a Macquarie Research Fellowship (MQRF) of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. S. García-Hernández was supported by a master student fellowship from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil (FAPESP 2012/23135-6).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zoological Institute: Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Kiel University, Am Botanischen Garten 9, 24118, Kiel, Germany

    Jonas O. Wolff & Stanislav N. Gorb

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Jonas O. Wolff

  3. Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do Matão, trav. 14, no. 321, São Paulo, 05508-900, SP, Brazil

    Solimary García-Hernández

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  1. Jonas O. Wolff
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  2. Solimary García-Hernández
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  3. Stanislav N. Gorb
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Correspondence to Jonas O. Wolff .

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  1. Department of Biology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Andrew M. Smith

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Wolff, J.O., García-Hernández, S., Gorb, S.N. (2016). Adhesive Secretions in Harvestmen (Arachnida: Opiliones). In: Smith, A. (eds) Biological Adhesives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46082-6_12

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