- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Professor Bond is serving a 2023-2025 term with president Linda Rayor of Cornell University's Department of Entomology, and then will assume the presidency. Bond specializes in the evolutionary diversification of terrestrial arthropods, specifically spiders, millipedes, and tenebrionid beetles. Rayor, a behavioral ecologist, focuses her research on the evolution of sociality in spiders.
AAS has played a huge role in Bond's career, with lifelong friends, colleagues, and collaborators who extend back nearly 30 years. "I consider it an honor to serve as AAS president."
AAS, founded in 1972, aims “to further the study of arachnids, foster closer cooperation and understanding between amateur and professional arachnologists, and to publish the Journal of Arachnology, according to its website. The journal is published three times a year.
A member of AAS since 1993, Bond co-hosted the 2022 AAS meeting at UC Davis, which included an outreach event, “Eight-Legged Encounters,” at the Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Bond joined the UC Davis faculty in 2018 after a seven-year academic career at Auburn University, Ala. He served as professor of biology, director of the Auburn University Museum of Natural History (2011-2105); chair of the Department of Biological Sciences from January 2016 to July 2018; and as curator of arachnids and myriapods (centipedes, millipedes, and related animals) from August 2011 to July 2018.
Bond also is the co-editor-in-chief of the journal Insect Systematics and Diversity, published by the Entomological Society of America. He and co-editor Hojun Song of Texas A&M began serving their four-year terms in 2022.
A veteran of the U.S. Army, Bond served as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crew chief upon graduation from high school.
Jason received his bachelor's degree in biological sciences, cum laude, in 1993 from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, and his master's degree in biology in 1995 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg. He earned his doctorate in evolutionary systematics and genetics in 1999 from Virginia Tech.
Research in his lab currently focuses on the California trapdoor spider fauna, specifically species delimitation, phylogeography, systematics and taxonomy; Bond has described many new spider taxa to include new families, genera, and more than 50 species.
