I’m in the thick of thesis writing at the moment so this blog has been a bit neglected, but it’s the time of year when all my spiders are out in force so I thought I’d write a little (more) about them. Here is a juvenile from outside my building at the University of Sydney […]
I recently competed in the 3 minute thesis (3MT) competition. Sitting down and trying to summarise 3 years of work into 3 mins is a very hard task, especially when trying to make it accessible to a general audience. It really makes you take a step back and remember what’s important about your work. Why […]
It’s been a very busy couple of months, but I’m almost finished classifying all my spiders. With over 5000 individuals it’s been a difficult but exciting process. Here is a sneak preview of some of the amazing diversity I’ve found in Sydney backyards.
It’s getting pretty cold Sydney in the moment, which means that most orb weaving spiders are coming towards the end of their season and I finally have some time to reconcile the work I’ve been doing for the last few months.
I’ve just started what I hope will be the one of the last experiments for my PhD, which involves collecting Golden Orb Weavers and transplanting them to new sites.
Now this is a weird one; Family Oecobiidae Genus: Oecobius They are very odd looking with their small bunch of eyes and flat round head.
I love scorpions, and you may have already worked out that I have a soft spot for spiders, so these guys are definitely favorites. Scorpion tailed spiders (genus Arachnura) are one of those great taxa where the name says it all. They come from one of the most common families of spider, the Araneidae which […]
During my searches I have often seen lots of webs with many small black spiders, all within the same web. But it wasn’t until I collected some and put them under the microscope that I identified them as belonging to the family Uloboridae, commonly called Venomless spiders.
It’s been a little quiet on my blog scene for the last few weeks. It’s field work season (yay!) so I’m spending my time out searching for my golden orb weavers and writing up a paper (stay tuned!).Even though I’m not currently sorting my samples, I wanted to share some more cool little spiders I […]
I promised a while ago to explain how to tell the difference between male and female spiders. It’s one of the most common questions I get asked, especially by kids when I point out a mummy or daddy spider! On a side note, I met so many kids during my garden surveys that were fascinated […]