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Member Symposium

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Formal and Informal Teaching

Entomology Collections: Windows to the Past, Present, and Future

Micro-CTiInsights into silk gland morphology from Natural History collections

Tuesday, November 11, 2025
4:40 PM - 4:50 PM Pacific
Location: Oregon Convention Center, Portland Ballroom 253, OCC
Oral Presentation
Silk production in insects has independently arisen multiple times across the insect tree of life, leading to a diverse range of silk types, functions and morphological structures. Embioptera, for example, is an order of sub-social insects renowned for their unique ability to produce silk throughout their entire lifecycle using modified hair-like ejectors on their feet. Webspinners use their hydrophobic silks to build protective domiciles, known as silken galleries, which harbor the insects from environmental elements and predation in both arboreal and fossorial habitats. Despite their prolific ability to produce silk compared to all other insects, there are minimal morphological characterizations or comparative studies for the silk glands across this order. Here, we take a comparative approach to characterizing the internal gland morphology for two species of webspinners in the family Oligotomidae: Oligotoma nigra and Aposthonia ceylonica. We present methods for elucidating interspecific morphological variation in silk producing structures using a modified workflow to non-destructively stain and scan natural history collections, leading to a larger scope of utilizing museum specimens for morphological research.