In lab experiments, spiders changed how they constructed their webs in noisy environments, and rural and urban spiders ...

That said, there are plenty of other harmless spiders in many other parts of the world who create webs shaped like a funnel.

A web isn't a foolproof way of identifying the spider that made it, but its shape will usually allow you to establish which family it comes from, and it's often possible to be even more specific. Here ...

An article in a 1995 issue of NASA Tech Briefs discussed work done by researchers at Marshall Space Flight Center to see how various substances — including caffeine — affect spider web patterns.