This post is not about aliens, but it is about the night-time marauding behaviour of fierce, many-limbed* predators: candy-striped spiders! I am very excited to share this new paper that was a collaboration with my partner in life and science, Sean McCann! It’s the shortest paper I’ve ever written, and also my favourite scientific contribution...

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This post is a summary of a recently-published paper (and related open-access dataset) that was a very fun collaboration led by Stefano Mammola, Angela Chuang, Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte and 61 other arachnologist colleagues* from around the world. Summary illustration of the paper by coauthor Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte. This study was largely motivated by our collective frustration at...

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I am very happy to share the publication of a new paper reporting research led by my fantastic colleague Lenka Sentenska and coauthored by Pierick Mouginot and Maydianne Andrade, in the journal Behavioral Ecology. Brown widow spiders (Latrodectus geometricus), like their relatives the Australian redbacks (L. hasselti), are sexually cannibalistic. This is not the situation...

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The American Arachnological Society is hosting a Virtual Conference Thursday June 24 – Thursday July 1. A keynote talk by Maydianne Andrade will open the meeting on the evening of the 24th. Program highlights include plenary talks by Mercedes Burns, Lauren Esposito, and Ivan Magalhães; oral and poster presentations; and a panel discussion and workshop on actions to dismantle racism and promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in arachnology. All arachnologists and arachnid enthusiasts are invited,…

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I am very excited to share the publication of a new paper coauthored with Sean McCann and my supervisor Maydianne Andrade in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The full paper can be found here (please email me or contact me on twitter if you don’t have access and would like a pdf copy). Before I summarize the study below, I would like to first thank the Tsawout First Nation for allowing me…

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I am honoured and a bit embarrassed to announce that SpiderBytes is in the running for the Science Borealis People’s Choice Award for “Canada’s Favourite Science Blog.” Honoured, because I am proud to be part of the Science Borealis network of Canadian science blogs! And embarrassed, because I have posted exactly two things here in the last year. In my defence, I have been in the thick of pursuing a PhD, but I will take this as a…

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I am very pleased to announce the publication of a review paper in the Journal of Arachnology (check out the full pdf here) about the fascinating uses of silk during spider sexual interactions coauthored with Alissa Anderson and my supervisor Maydianne Andrade. This paper has been several years in the making, and some of my very first blog posts were based on the research I did when I first started writing it back in 2013…

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This is just a quick announcement about a new citizen science and education project called Recluse or Not? A recluse spider (Loxosceles arizonica). Photo: Sean McCann. Recluse or Not? is a collaboration with North Carolina entomologists Eleanor Spicer Rice (Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Spiders) and Matt Bertone that you can read all about on the project page here! Briefly, it is a way for citizens to contribute data about where in North America recluse spiders (genus Loxosceles) occur, and to quickly…

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For the past six months, Sean and I have been spending most of our nights observing black widows in their natural habitat on Vancouver Island, BC. We did a couple of short experiments during our time in the field, but the vast majority of our work involved simply observing the spiders as they went about their business. The goal was to get a better understanding of the natural behaviour and mating dynamics of this population.…

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