GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist and her five parrots are currently relocating to Germany, where she will continue writing her blog while also writing a book and learning German. (Meanwhile, her parrots will continue to nibble on her extensive personal library.) If you appreciate GrrlScientist's writing, you can help pay her living expenses by hiring her to "blog" your conference, speak at your club or write articles for your publication (or by clicking on the Paypal button below). If you read an essay on this blog that you especially enjoyed, please nominate it for inclusion in 
Female jumping spider, unknown species. Can any of you readers ID the species?
"A female guarding her egg case. She was so very cute," the photographer says. "I could tell she was a little fearful, but wasn't about to abandon her egg case." Unfortunately, the photographer didn't get an ID for her as she didn't get such a good look at the spider because the spider wanted to keep her eyes on the photographer!
Image: Bev Wigney.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if we decide to destroy these other life forms, the least we can do is to know what we are destroying by learning that they exist. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
.
Comments
I love jumping spiders, ever since I saw a presentation by Dr. Wayne Maddison of UBC a couple of years ago. He talked about the mating displays of the males, and demonstrated them himself. It's not easy to represent a dance that requires 8 legs using only 4. Highly cool. Also a very interesting group from a phylogenetics and sexual-selection perspective.
He's posted some videos of these dances (by the spiders, not by him) on tree of life:
http://tolweb.org/accessory/Movies_of_Jumping_Spider_Courtship?acc_id=64
Posted by: TheBrummell | February 8, 2007 11:15 AM