The Arachnology Lab @
California Academy of Sciences
Arachnid Systematics, Biogeography & Genomics
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Great Public Outreach Opportunities
Brian Ferry March 2012
These next few months I have been invited to give a number of talks for the general public. The first two will be at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences on September 19th at SciCafe and on the 21st at Bug Fest. They have put up a RocketHub project to raise money for my visit, and I can't wait to see how the world responds to crowdfunding science!
The next event I have been invited to speak at is Saba Sea & Learn, a really exciting annual community science seminar series on the island of Saba.
Last but not least, I was visited this spring by Ryder Diaz, a science journalist, who produced a really awesome audio slideshow about my research.
Sailboat Updates
The past two months have marked a new beginning for the Caribbean Biogeography project: the Lesser Antilles. On January 13th, 2013 I boarded the Sailing Yacht Reboot for a six-month island hopping tour of the Lesser Antilles. With our Captain Roger Jones at the helm, we (myself and a rotating team of field assistants) will be making our way, one island at a time, to Grenada and then back north to the Bahamas bank, and hopefully ending in Cuba to pick up samples from our Cuban collaborators.
The first three weeks of our sailing expedition were spent in and around Sint Maarten, figuring out how to make sailing and arachnid collecting work together and preparing the ship for a six-month voyage. We are well on our way south, but a recap of our activities thus far is certainly in order!
Zamira Yuseff (University of Vermont) and I started the expedition in Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, and after a warm welcome from our Captain and crew we got to work (both on the boat and off). After meeting with natural resources and parks personnel from both sides of the island, we spent several days sorting out how to work effectively with a smaller crew than we are used to. On the French side, we got to spend some time with Julien Chalifour from the Reserve Naturelle Saint Martin. On the Dutch side we made it to some caves with assistance from the island’s resident naturalist: Mark Yokoyama. After a fruitful week of collecting we made our first trial voyage to the neighboring islands of Tintamarre and Saint Barths. Tintamarre, part of the Reserve Naturelle, was hot, dry, and of course full of spiders.
Saint Barths turned out to be less than ideal from a sailing standpoint since the anchorage was unprotected. We spent two nights standing watch while rocking and rolling. In between, we had the opportunity to meet and work with the super arachnid-knowledgeable Karl Questel who led us around the accessible areas of the largely privately owned island of mega-yachts. We then headed back to Saint Martin to pick-up Angela Chuang (former UC Berkeley), make a few last minute repairs to the boat, and wait out a storm before heading to Saba.
Our next stop, Saba- “the unspoiled queen”, was fantastic. We arrived on a Sunday, which meant everything on the island was closed. Luckily I got a fantastic taxi driver to help me find the home of one of two rental car guys on the island. Everyone was incredibly friendly, and there was quite a bit of local interest in our research. The island’s trail system is impeccably maintained, so it was very easy to navigate through the habitats and collecting went very well.
From Saba we headed to ‘Statia’ to meet with collaborator Hannah Madden of STENAPA on her home turf. We had an amazing few days of carefree collecting with the immensely knowledgeable Hannah leading us around. We also made two exciting arachnid discoveries on the island- a tiny ant-mimic Salticid never recorded, and schizomids in the Quill!
Our next stop was Saint Kitts, where we bid farewell to Angela, but said hello to our new team member Ana Miller-ter Kuile (former Stanford U). In Saint Kitts we met a local hiking enthusiast, Wayne Clarke, who led us on our spider hunts. We also parked Reboot at a dock in the marina, making it the first time Reboot had been docked since the other side of the pond! From Saint Kitts we headed over to Nevis!
Nevis was truly welcoming of arachnid research! We arrived and were given a five-star welcome by our local host- the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society. They arranged a television interview, newspaper coverage, meetings with the Directors of the Ministries, a guide from the Ministry of Agriculture, and our cameraman even offered to drive us around for collecting! The island was a great success, and we are hoping people will be excited about arachnids after they see our TV debut! I left the boat in Nevis and returned home to get some (other) work done, but left the collecting the able hands of Ana and Anne McHugh (University of Vermont), and will be returning in the near future…
A Sailboat!
Brian Ferry March 2012
After considerable effort, Team CarBio has secured a volunteer sailboat to sample arachnids in the Lesser Antilles! Captain Roger, his firstmate XO the Wonder Cat, and their ship Reboot have graciously agreed to join us on a spider adventure. We will depart from St. Martin in January, island hopping south to Grenada, and then??? A flurry of supplies, organizing personnel and permits have been taking place for the past month to ensure this massive undertaking will be a success!!
We will blog and tweet the trip so be sure to follow the team at http://www.islandbiogeography.org/blog.html , twitter @CaribbeanBio, and Reboot @ http://www.sailboatreboot.com/Position.aspx
News on the Genomic Front
Some exciting news on progress with genomic projects I am working on:
We now have assembled ‘venomes’ (venom transcriptomes) for two species of Centruroides. Guillaume Vandenesch from Agro Paris Tech will be analyzing the transcriptome data, looking for venom gene families.
The Centruroides genome has been sequenced and is beginning to be assembled at Baylor’s HGSC! Can’t wait for the genome to come down the pipeline for annotation!
image credit: http://www.alexanderwild.com/
2012 Fieldwork/ Museum Visit/ Congress Updates 2Ca
rol Simons March 2012
I am long overdue for an update, but better late than never. In the months that have passed, I have participated in two expeditions, made two visits to the Smithsonian LAB, and attended the European Congress of Arachnology.
Expeditions:
Cuba was a great success. We visited four sites across the island, collected thousands of samples, and met some great colleagues and friends.
Dominican Republic was a six week expedition organized by your-truly with 15 participants! In a 3-vehicle caravan, 4 Lewis and Clark College undergrads, 2 UC Berkeley undergrads, 2 University of Vermont graudate students, two Dominican arachnologists, 1 Cuban arachnologist, Ingi Agnarsson, Greta Binford and myself traversed the island of Hispaniola, collecting over 73,000 arachnids! We blogged and tweeted the entire expedition (http://www.islandbiogeography.org/blog.html) (twitter @CaribbeanBio)! We also spent a week in Dominican schools teaching kids about Arachnid Biodiversity!
Smithsonian LAB:
I spent two separate weeks at the Smithsonian’s LAB admiring their streamlined Barcoding pipeline. During my stay I extracted DNA from over 2000 specimens, PCR’d 1600 specimens for COI, and sequenced 1000 of the PCRs! Talk about an efficient set-up, it was great to see and learn from their years of experience.
ECA Slovenia:
The European Congress of Arachnology, held in Slovenia, was a fantastic meeting with a wide range of attendees. I presented on Caribbean Biogeography of Centruroides scorpions, in a talk co-authored by Lorenzo Prendini and Rosemary Gillespie.