Ballistic high powered spider webs overcome dangerous prey defenses

Spiders exhibit a remarkable range of silk-based predatory tactics, but usually avoid capturing ants since they are highly defended. Here we report on a spider that exclusively hunts aggressive Oecophylla ants by isolating and immobilising individual workers using a extraordinary ballistic snare that lures ants, then propels them into its core web at extreme speed. By serial arrangements of tension lines, small pre-strains of the silk are sufficient to reach power densities of up to two megawatts per kilogram actuator mass, which surpasses the performance of other natural spring-actuated systems. Thus, the ultimate prey specialisation in these spiders has led to the evolution of extreme web performance., Highspeed video data was collected in the field at Cape York. 
Videos were processed and analysed in the lab. Collected silk was analysed in the lab using different microscopy techniques., , # Ballistic high powered spider webs overcome dangerous prey defenses

[\[Access this dataset on Dryad\] https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2fqz612xt](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2fqz612xt)

## Description of the data and file structure

We have provided four Matlab files. This file can be accessed through any of the recent version of Matlab.

a. propostira_data.mat: contains raw data and outputs (details below)

b. propositra_analyses.m: is the Matlab script to load and run propostira_data.mat

c. acceleration.m: is a function that should be saved and downloaded in the same folder with other files. No need to open this, but required to run propositra_analyses.m

d. smooth.m: is a function that should be saved and downloaded in the same folder with other files. No need to open this, but required to run propositra_analyses.m

Contents of propostira_data.mat:

This is a matlab structure with data for six attack sequences. The structure is organised as follows:

name: filename contains the v...