We collected silk from a further three individuals per treatment per species for SAXS/WAXS analyses. We did this by spooling their silk onto 3 mm x 1 mm titanium frames containing 0.5 mm x 0.5 mm windows (see ) for ~1 h (A. keyserlingi, L. hasselti and P. graeffei) or ~2 h (E. transmarina and N. plumipes). We assumed that the amount of silk extracted was approximately the entire store of silk from the spider’s major ampullate glands. We collected between 1000–2000 rounds of silk across the windows of each frame. We have previously found this amount of silk to be adequate for attaining quality scattering from 5-35keV synchrotron X-ray sources .