Arizona blond tarantula (Aphonopelma chalcodes), hatched August 5, 2010. Approximately half the size of my smallest fingernail, this captive-bred spiderling was given to me by the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute at the 2011 Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference. Double click image for full impact!
Ready access to high quality video and written text resources make it difficult to NOT engage students in a ready understanding of spider biology and behavioral complexity.
I introduced my Field Biology students to spider diversity prior to our first collecting trip through True Adventures of the Ultimate Spider-Hunter . It’s an excellent production that deals with a number of desert invertebrates in Arizona (IECC!), though the focus is tarantula species found throughout the world.
I followed this up with video from Jurgen Otto, accessible at http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/the-remarkable-courtship-of-the-worlds-most-beautiful-spider/ .
You can find a lot of follow-up material from the Elias lab at UC-Berkley, accessible at http://nature.berkeley.edu/eliaslab/Multimedia.html .
Gotta love what’s available. It’s just up to the rest of us who appreciate this type of diversity to do our job in getting this information out to the rest of the world!
Cute little guy!