Here's a summary of our paper on the gobal spread of (mis)information about spiders!

This was a collaboration with a worldwide web of arachnologist colleagues, including @stefanomammola1, @arachnonaut, @jago_MO, & (contd)

spiderbytes.org/2022/08/23/the… @Arachno_Cosas, @Ingi_Agnarsson, Valeria Arabesky, Aimee Lynn Barrion-Dupo, Marco Antonio Benamú, Tharina Bird, Maria Bogolomova, @cardosopmb, Maria Chatzaki, Ren-Chung Cheng, Tien-Ai Chu, @KalaKemangga, André-Philippe Drapeau Picard, Hisham K. El-Hennawy, Mert Elverici,...

Because it needs to be said: if your conference last year or this year was in person because reasons (eg booked venue long ago) & you didn’t do a perfect hybrid meeting this year, my tweets are not a criticism of you personally or a claim that it would have been easy to do better Changing the way we do things is difficult. Making conferences (& other things we do) has real costs. That’s not actually a good argument for not changing.

And miss me with the “if you’re not personally bearing all the costs sit down and be quiet” takes.

Yesterday I wrote about how if you are serious about diversity, equity, and inclusion, you need to keep having online conferences

Here's the TL;DR summary (thread)

smallpondscience.com/2022/02/03/if-… 1. Over the last 2 years, many academic societies switched from traditional in-person meetings to virtual.

A lot of folks can't wait to get "back to normal" (and indeed lots of meetings this year are planned in-person only).

But what if "normal" isn't actually best?

I will tweet more later about this but wow yesterday was a terrifying lesson and reminder about the importance of fieldwork safety planning and how I need to do better. NEVER do fieldwork alone or let your students do so, please! Accidents happen. Have plans/first aid training. Everyone is ok but it could have gone less well and we were unprepared for a medical emergency in a variety of ways and it was definitely the scariest day of my life.

W is for wandering spiders (family Ctenidae)! #DailySpider

This is Phoneutria, one of the few spiders with venom that is very dangerous to humans.

Though we do have a few wandering spider species in North America, Phoneutria is only found in Central & South America. Here is a great photo and blog post about Phoneutria by @wizentrop! (Note that he did not actually get bitten).

gilwizen.com/creativity-pho…

Today's #DailySpider is the brown recluse, Loxosceles reclusa (family Sicariidae).

These secretive, six-eyed #spiders are almost certainly the most feared & misunderstood in North America. Spiders in the genus #Loxosceles* are considered medically important because their venom can be harmful to humans (unlike that of the vast majority of other spiders).

*There are several species in North America. Pictured here: the Arizona recluse (L) & Big Bend recluse (R).

To celebrate the last days of #Arachtober, why not add some #SpiderGlamour to your nails? @mikamckinnon, @Ibycter & I teamed up to test out some inspidered styles for #ManicureMonday! For some serious #SpiderGlamour incorporating lovely autumn colours look to the fishing spider spider #Dolomedes #scriptus! Also known as dock spiders, these large spiders are common across eastern North America. #ManicureMonday