- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, "Eight-Legged Encounters," co-sponsored by the American Arachnological Society (AAS) and held June 25 in the Academic Surge Building, drew more than 250 attendees and 40 volunteers.
"It was an absolutely amazing event!" said arachnologist Jason Bond of UC Davis, co-host of the AAS meeting.
"We were pleased to see such a large turnout from the community but even more so delighted to see so many young people," said Bond, associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and professor and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "There were over 40 volunteer arachnologists representing a national and international contingent of expertise. While we couldn't have done it without them, they also contributed a tremendous amount of expertise, excitement, and energy to the event."
Hebets, the Charles Bessey Professor at UNL and president of the Animal Behavior Society, co-hosted the open house as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation grant, “Eight-Legged Encounters” that she developed as an outreach project to connect arachnologists with communities, especially youth. (See her website).
Some 20 activity tables lined the hallway of the Academic Surge Building.
"Our Eight-Legged Encounters event at the UC Davis Bohart Museum far exceeded our expectations!" said Professor Hebets. "It was an incredibly successful event, with well over 250 attendees and more then 40 volunteers, many of which were graduate students and post-doctoral researchers from across the country and world. There is no doubt it was a life-changing experience for some of our young attendees as well as some of the student volunteers. I am so very thankful for the help and support we received from the Bohart Museum and from Dr. Jason Bond and his laboratory. It could not have happened without them."
Bond co-hosted the AAS conference, held June 26-30 on the UC Davis campus, with Lisa Chamberland, postdoctoral research associate of the Bond lab, and Joel Ledford, assistant professor of teaching, Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences. Chamberland coordinated the spider-species naming project with second-year doctoral student Emma Jochim of the Bond lab and incoming doctoral student Iris Bright, who starts this fall. No winner has yet been announced.
Some of the displays:
- "Black widow hourglasses are actually on their bellies. These spiders are actually social!"--Laura
- "I want to learn what is in spider venom and how it helps catch prey."--Greta
- "Trapdoor spiders live in California and eat bugs. There are many unknown species. I use DNA to find new species."-Jim
The Bohart Museum also drew scores of visitors during the 1 to 4 p.m. open house. Entomologist Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection and Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas showed visitors butterfly and moth specimens, while other volunteers discussed other collections, including spider wasps and small-headed flies. The museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens, as well as a live "petting zoo" (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas) and an insect-themed gift shop.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
One of the activities at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house, "Eight-Legged Encounters," set from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, June 25, will be a "Name-That-Spider-Species" contest, open to students 18 and under. The focus: a male trapdoor spider, a new species from the genus Promyrmekiaphila.
The event will be co-hosted by the Bohart Museum and the American Arachnological Society (AAS).
The open house will kick off the annual meeting of AAS, which meets June 26-30 on the UC Davis campus, said arachnologist Jason Bond, associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. Professor Bond is chairing the AAS conference with Lisa Chamberland, postdoctoral research associate of the Bond lab, and Joel Ledford, assistant professor of teaching, Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences.
Chamberland, who holds a doctorate from the University of Vermont where she studied the historical biogeography of net-casting spiders (Deinopis) and spiny-backed orb-weavers (Gasteracantha) in the Caribbean, is coordinating the spider-species naming project with doctoral student Emma Jochim of the Bond lab and incoming doctoral student Iris Bright, who starts this fall.
"The genus Promyrmekiaphila is a group of trapdoor spiders that construct silk-lined burrows with wafer-like trapdoor lids, usually decorated with plant material or substrate," Jochim explained. "It's found generally in the Southern Bay Area. As of now there are only two species in the genus, so this new species will be the third!"
The student who wins the contest will have the honor of naming the new species, and an acknowledgment will appear in a forthcoming scientific paper, said Bond.
At the open house, some 20 exhibits and activities--educational and entertaining--will be set up in the hallway of the Academic Surge Building. “There will be everything--spider specimens, live arachnids, activities, artwork, etc., at the open house," said Bond, adding that a powerhouse of the nation's arachnologists will participate.
AAS member Eileen Hebets, professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is co-hosting the open house as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation grant, “Eight-Legged Encounters” that she developed as an outreach project to connect arachnologists with communities, especially youth. She seeks to educate the public “about the wonders of biology and the possibility of scientific discovery using a charismatic and engaging group of animals--arachnids. Arachnids (spiders and their relatives) are ubiquitous, thriving in most habitable environments on our planet (including underwater),” as mentioned on her website, https://hebetslab.unl.edu/
Professor Bond offers five good reasons to like spiders:
- Spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey, mostly insects, each year. Humans consume somewhere around 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.
- Spider silk is one of the strongest naturally occurring materials. Spider silk is stronger than steel, stronger and more stretchy than Kevlar; a pencil thick strand of spider silk could be used to stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
- Some spiders are incredibly fast--able to run up to 70 body lengths per second (10X faster than Usain Bolt).
- Although nearly all 47,000-plus spider species have venom used to kill their insect prey, very few actually have venom that is harmful to humans.
- Some spiders are really good parents--wolf spider moms carry their young on their backs until they are ready to strike out on their own; female trapdoor spiders keep their broods safe inside their burrows often longer than one year, and some female jumping spiders even nurse their spiderlings with a protein rich substance comparable to milk.
Hebets says that as a scientist, a mother and an educator, she often sees "the disconnect between youth and the world around them; between problem solving skills, observation skills, critical thinking, natural curiosity and the more traditional formal teaching programs experienced by many students. Youth are innately curious and tremendously creative and my aim is to leverage these traits for their own educational advancements in a fun and engaging manner.” To date, Hebets and her collaborators have developed more than 25 modular activity stations “encompassing arts and crafts, experiments, games, and other hands-on activities." They include classification and taxonomy, spiders and silk, path of predators, and hands-on science.
The Bohart Museum, directed by UC Davis distinguished professor Lynn Kimsey, houses a worldwide collection of eight million insect specimens; a live "petting zoo" (Madagascar hissing cockroaches, stick insects and tarantulas) and an insect-themed gift shop.
In addition to the open house, AAS has scheduled a series of arachnid lectures, free and open to the public, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, June 28, in the newly constructed 600-seat lecture hall, California Hall.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The free, public open house. featuring spiders and other arachnids, promises to be one of the biggest events--if not the leggiest!--of the year on the UC Davis campus and beyond. The Bohart Museum is located in the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane.
A "powerhouse" of arachnologists will be participating, said Jason Bond, associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. He will be hosting the conference with Lisa Chamberland, postdoctoral research associate, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and Joel Ledford, assistant professor of teaching, Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences.
“There will be everything--spider specimens, live arachnids, activities, artwork, etc.," Professor Bond said.
Some 20 exhibits and activities will be set up in the hallway of the Academic Surge Building, said Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator.
Professor Eileen Hebets of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is co-hosting the open house as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation grant, “Eight-Legged Encounters” that she developed as an outreach project to connect arachnologists with communities, especially youth. See https://www.youtube.com/
Through the NSF grant, awarded in 2013, Hebets seeks to educate the public “about the wonders of biology and the possibility of scientific discovery using a charismatic and engaging group of animals--arachnids. Arachnids (spiders and their relatives) are ubiquitous, thriving in most habitable environments on our planet (including underwater),” Professor Hebets writes on her website at https://hebetslab.unl.edu/
“As a scientist, a mother, and an educator, I often see the disconnect between youth and the world around them; between problem solving skills, observation skills, critical thinking, natural curiosity and the more traditional formal teaching programs experienced by many students,” she writes. “Youth are innately curious and tremendously creative and my aim is to leverage these traits for their own educational advancements in a fun and engaging manner.”
To date, Hebets and her collaborators have developed more than 25 modular activity stations “encompassing arts and crafts, experiments, games, and other hands-on activities." They include classification and taxonomy, spiders and silk, path of predators, and hands-on science.
Also at the open house, plans call for “A Name-That-Spider-Species" contest, coordinated by postdoctoral fellow Lisa Chamberland and PhD students Iris Bright and Emma Jochim of the Bond lab. “We'll have an exhibit at the event with details on the spider,” Bond said. It's a trapdoor spider from the genus Promyrmekiaphila. “We'd like to restrict naming suggestions to be youths attending the event, students 18 years and younger."
Another highlight of the American Arachnological
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Newton studies with Professor Jason Bond, associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
"Spiders placed in the infraorder Mygalomorphae (tarantulas, trapdoor spiders and their kin) are generally recognized as an ancient cosmopolitan lineage that has persisted for over 250 million years," Newton wrote in her abstract. "Mygalomorph life history traits that include limited dispersal abilities, habitat specialization, and site fidelity altogether make them ideal organisms for studying speciation pattern and process, phylogeography, and adaptation. Evolutionary studies of mygalomorphs at both shallow and deeper phylogenetic levels have been limited prior to the advent of next generation sequencing approaches, with the majority of such studies relying on morphological characters or limited targeted locus approaches for phylogenetic reconstruction. Thus, it is imperative to implement larger genomic-scale datasets for confident reconstruction of relationships."
Her dissertation focuses on species delimitation in two trapdoor spider groups, Antrodiaetus unicolor complex and Aptostichus icenoglei sister species complex, and evaluation of interspecific relationships within the genus Aptostichus. To address species boundaries in the A. unicolor species complex, she implemented genomic-scale data (that it, restriction-site associated DNA sequencing, RADseq) in conjunction with morphological, behavioral, and ecological data to evaluate cohesion species identity (Chapter I).
Similarly, assessing species boundaries in the Aptostichus icenoglei sibling species complex involved a target capture approach for subgenomic data (that is, ultraconserved elements, UCEs) and ecological data to evaluate genetic and ecological exchangeability, as per the cohesion species-based delimitation approach from a previous study (Chapter II).
Newton expects to receive her doctorate by the end of summer and "then I will be heading to the American Museum of Natural History where I will be working in Jessica Ware's lab as a postdoctoral fellow on systematics of broader Odonata as well as Anisoptera (dragonflies)."
First-Generation College Student. Born and raised in Eupora, Miss., Lacie is a first-generation college student. She received her bachelor of science degree in biological sciences from Millsaps College in 2016 and then enrolled in the graduate school program at Auburn University, Alabama, studying with Professor Bond. When he accepted the Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics in 2018, Lacie, along with other lab members, transferred to UC Davis.
What sparked her interest in spiders? “I actually used to be terrified of spiders,” Lacie acknowledged. “It wasn't until fall semester of my sophomore year when I took a zoology course that I began to appreciate not only the vast amount of diversity within spiders but also how amazing they are as a group, such as the tensile strength of spider silk being comparable to steel, spider venoms playing a role in potential medical applications, and a myriad of feeding strategies, etc..”
Her research on folding-door spiders or the Antrodiaetus unicolor species complex led to a journal article published in Molecular Ecology: “Integrative Species Delimitation Reveals Cryptic Diversity in the Southern Appalachian Antrodiaetus unicolor (Araneae: Antrodiaetidae) Species Complex.” UC Davis co-authors are Professor Bond, who is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, and project scientist James Starrett of the Bond lab.
Newton is active in both the American Arachnological Society (AAS) and the Society of Systematic Biologists. She won a second-place award for her oral presentation on species delimitation at the 2019 AAS meeting, held at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.
At UC Davis, Newton served as a teaching assistant for the “Introduction to Biology: Biodiversity and the Tree of Life” course. Her resume also includes:
- mentoring undergraduate students in the Mentoring Program, Equity in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Entrepreneurship (ESTEME) organization, a graduate student organization dedicated to improving equity and inclusion in STEM fields, entrepreneurship, and leadership positions.
- volunteering on the admissions committee for GOALS, the Girls' Outdoor Adventure in Leadership and Science, a summer science program for high school students to learn science hands-on while backpacking through the wilderness.
AAS Conference at UC Davis. Newton is looking forward to the AAS conference, set June 26-30, at UC Davis, and will be assisting at the Eight-Legged Encounters open house from 1 to 4 p.m., June 25 at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building on Crocker Lane. The event will officially kick off the AAS meeting.
A "powerhouse" of arachnologists will be participating, said Bond, who will be hosting the conference with Lisa Chamberland, postdoctoral research associate, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and Joel Ledford, assistant professor of teaching, Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences.
Professor Eileen Hebets of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, is co-hosting the open house as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation grant, “Eight-Legged Encounters” that she developed as an outreach project to connect arachnologists with communities, especially youth.
Some 20 exhibits and activities will be set up in the hallway of the Academic Surge Building, said Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator. “There will be everything--spider specimens, live arachnids, activities, artwork, etc.," Bond related.
Another highlight of the American Arachnological
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Monday, June 1 at 5 p.m. is the deadline to suggest a species name for a new genus of trapdoor spiders that UC Davis professor Jason Bond discovered on a sandy beach at Moss Landing State Park, Monterey County.
Bond proposes to name the genus, Cryptocteniza, part of which means “hidden or secret.”
Bond, a noted spider authority and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is accepting suggestions until 5 p.m., June 1 at jbond@ucdavis.edu.
Bond will announce several of the best names at the Bohart Museum of Entomology pending virtual open house on the Bohart's Facebook Live page. He will also field questions about spiders. The first Bohart Museum virtual house spotlighted director Lynn Kimsey talking about bees and wasps.
Bond is submitting a manuscript to a scientific journal on the new genus. He and manuscript co-author Joel Ledford, assistant professor of teaching, UC Davis Department of Plant Biology, will select the winner. Ledford, whose research interests include spider systematics and biology education, interviewed Bond May 18 for his Tree of Life-UC Davis YouTube channel. It is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV_eTablJMk.
“We don't want a public vote on the spider name,” in deference to the British polar research vessel that garnered a top public vote of “Boaty McBoatface” a few years ago, quipped Bond.
He does not want it named Bond or anything to do with the coronavirus pandemic.
Trapdoor spiders are so named because they construct their burrows with a corklike or wafer trap door made of soil, vegetation and silk.
Bond discovered the female spider in 1997 on the sandy beach, and collected the male spider last fall. It is rare to find a genus in the field, the professor said. The usual place is in museum collections.
“I have only one male specimen,” Bond told Ledford. It will find a permanent home in the Bohart Museum.
“This genus meets the criteria of an endangered living fossil,” Bond said, “and is consequently of grave conservation concern.”
Bond believes the genus is found only in that area, but thinks it may be closely related to a genus found in New Mexico and Arizona.
Of the genus name, Cryptocteniza, Bond says that the adjective “hidden or secret” is prefixed to Cteniza, the Greek feminine noun “comb.” The latter refers to the comb-like rastellum (row of stiff spines on the chelicera) common in taxa and formerly assigned to the spider family Ctenizidae (e.g., Eucteniza). The prefix refers to both the diminutive form of the rastellum and the seemingly “hidden in plain sight” nature of the genus, he says.
(Please send name suggestions to jbond@ucdavis.edu)