Textiles in mythology and folklore
Among the Olympians, the weaver goddess is Athena, who, despite her role, was bested by her acolyte Arachne, who was turned later into a weaving spider. The daughters of Minyas, Alcithoe, Leuconoe and their sister, defied Dionysus and honored Athena in their weaving instead of joining his festival. A woven peplum, laid upon the knees of the goddess's iconic image, was central to festivals honoring both Athena at Athens, and Hera.
Sara Goodacre
Goodacre joined the University of Oxford as a research fellow in 1999. She was a research fellow at the University of East Anglia from 2002. She was described by the BBC as "Spider Woman". , Goodacre is based at the University of Nottingham, where she founded the SpiderLab in 2007 and leads the "ArachNotts" research group. As a geneticist, "Goodacre" studies the evolution, population and conservation of spiders. She monitored the mating behaviour and sex ratio of the linyphiid spider "Pityohyphantes phrygianus" with Bengt Gunnarsson at the University of Gothenburg. She also studied the silk of Mygalomorphae spiders and the genetic diversity of spider silk genes and found evidence for antimicrobial activity in the silk of common house spiders. She found that "Erigone atra", a pest controlling spider, uses long-distance airborne dispersal. Goodacre contributed to the 2011 book Spider Physiology and Behaviour: Physiology. In 2015 Goodacre reported that spiders could survive "sailing" across oceans.