How do your findings fit in with the rest of Biology as a field?

One of the open questions in biology is how animals are combining different forms of information into one. In the long run, jumping spiders might be a good system to study because they do have relatively simple brains and their behaviors are very complex. Maybe we could figure out how the animals are using both those streams of info and combining them and maybe get an idea of how higher organisms, mammals or something, are able to put different forms of info together…

I'm interested in studying how brains are able to combine info. How animals process complex things and how and what aspects of that processing allows them to make a decision. The work that I'm doing is for the most part start from scratch and I would like to continue working on it because I think it's got some promise. At least so far, I have more questions than answers. So I think I can have a long time to try and figure some of these questions out

Are there practical applications to your research?

jumping spiders have 8 eyes!

I'm working on both vision and hearing. The way jumping spiders see is very unusual in the animal kingdom. They are the only ones who have evolved the type of eye that they have. A lot of work was done on these eyes in the 60s and 70s, but there are not that many people working on that right now. What the spiders have been able to do with a really tiny eye - they are better than any insect and they are almost comparable to even certain mammals. So they have a very acute eye in a very small head. You can imagine being able to design some type of detector that's a very small camera.

In terms of the vibrations, there are reasons that we would want to be able to detect vibrations really well, like earthquakes. Millions of years have allowed spiders to evolve vibration detectors that are a lot more sensitive than anything we've designed. If we are able to figure their system out, then it is possible that we could use it to design earthquake detectors or something like that.

What do you dislike about doing science? What do you like about it?

Science has some of the most well educated and more intelligent people. But sometimes it's a big sacrifice. People work insane hours and it's always driven by passion, because the economic benefits aren't good at all.

I find going out and seeing things happening fascinating. If you take a step back and see animals behaving, or even molecules interacting with each other, it's absolutely amazing. That always makes me want to figure out why it's happening, how it evolved, what are the mechanisms behind it. It's my way of examining the world.

What characteristics make you a good scientist?

I have a good combination of being stubborn and open-minded. I also have a very inquisitive personality. An analytical mind is good to have, too. People who like figuring out how things work make good scientists.

What kind of advice would you give to aspiring scientists?

Science is not some type of magic, there's a process to it. Get out and see how experiments work. The most important thing is to work in a lab, do experimental work in a lab, so you can see firsthand how science works and see if it works for you.

I think there should more lab work in school, especially labs where you get out to nature. You can read about things in books, but it's not important to you until you are able to look at something in nature.

Science was always sort of mysterious to me. You read scientific books and watch nature programs that show all these cool things. But you think, "there's no way people would pay me to go look at animals!" It was really a surprise that you could get paid for it, and also that people doing research aren't these magical people. They are just people who work hard and have really strong passions.

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