Arachnids rule!

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."

"Dr. Eileen Hebets of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL), has designed an amazing program; the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and Bohart Museum of Entomology,  are grateful that she was willing to share this with us," Bond said.

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. 

Preceding the open house, Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum, had asked "spider scientists"  to write a one-page report about their research "as if they were kids again."

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.  

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 species was originally found in the early 2000s, but the first male was collected last October," said Jochim, a second-year doctoral student interested in the evolution and systematics of trapdoor spiders, particularly species that live in California's coastal dunes.

"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/eight-legged-encounters.

Bohart Museum and AAS officials are encouraging the public to attend the open house. Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator, said the public will see a diversity of arachnids from scorpions to ticks to camel spiders. "There are a lot of false myths and misundertandings about these creatures," Yang said. "As they say 'knowledge is power' and so everyone who attends the Saturday event and/or the Tuesday evening talks could come away mighty powerful. Also, you don't have to love them to be curious about them. Knowledge can also conquer fears." 

Professor Bond offers five good reasons to like spiders:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Some spiders are incredibly fast--able to run up to 70 body lengths per second (10X faster than Usain Bolt).
4. 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.
5. 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.

Arachnids "are tremendously diverse in their form, behavior, sensory systems, and general natural histories; making arachnid ecology and evolution fertile ground for teaching a breadth of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) knowledge content," Hebets says on her website. "The diversity of arachnid biology allows us to fluidly integrate concepts and knowledge from fields as disparate as anatomy, physiology, development, animal behavior, predator ecology, biomechanics, biomimetics, and bioinspired technologies (among others) into hands-on educational activities for audiences of all ages.”

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. 

A special open house, “Eight-Legged Encounters,” set from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, June 25 at the Bohart Museum of Entomology will officially kick off the 2022 American Arachnological Society's meeting at UC Davis.

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/watch?v=heryXCD39cs.  

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/eight-legged-encounters. “They are tremendously diverse in their form, behavior, sensory systems, and general natural histories; making arachnid ecology and evolution fertile ground for teaching a breadth of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) knowledge content. The diversity of arachnid biology allows us to fluidly integrate concepts and knowledge from fields as disparate as anatomy, physiology, development, animal behavior, predator ecology, biomechanics, biomimetics, and bioinspired technologies (among others) into hands-on educational activities for audiences of all ages.”

“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 Society conference will be a series of public lectures, aimed for both novices and experts alike, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, June 28, in the newly constructed 600-seat lecture hall, California Hall. The building, located in the campus core, is circled by Hutchison, Asmundson, Kerr, Robbins and Haring halls. The event is free and open to the public. 

Watch for eight-legged encounters! 

The American Arachnological Society's 2022 meeting is scheduled June 26-30 on the University of California, Davis, campus. 

It will be hosted by two UC Davis arachnologists: Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and Joel Ledford, assistant professor of teaching, Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences.

Formal meeting registration will begin Sunday afternoon, June 26, followed by an evening reception. A local daylong field trip is planned for Thursday, June 30. (Pre-register for the meeting at https://ces.ucdavis.edu/AASM)

"We typically expect somewhere around 125-150," Bond said.  

The event is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation. In collaboration with the UC Davis Bohart Museum of Entomology and the University of Nebraska, “we will also host a pre-meeting, outreach event, ‘Eight-Legged Encounters' for the Davis community and campus,” Bond said. It's tentatively planned for Saturday, June 25. Those interested in attending should contact Bond at jbond@ucdavis.edu.

The purpose of the American Arachnological Society, founded in 1972, is “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.