Re-Release: Happy Face Spiders with Rosemary Gillespie

Many parts of the world are celebrating all things spooky this time of year, and spiders are getting their time to shine. Whether you’re a spider lover or not, you have to admit that spiders have some stunning diversity and fascinating natural history.

To celebrate that, this is a re-release of an episode we originally published on February 9th of 2021. It’s a wonderful interview with Dr. Rosemary Gillespie who studies “Happy Face Spiders,” spiders from the Hawaiian Islands with unique colors and patterns. Dr. Gillespie is a professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, professor in the Division of Insect Biology, and Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at the University of California - Berkeley.

She and Brian, creator of the podcast, discuss why these spiders are called Happy Face spiders, how they got to Hawaii, and why they are important in the Hawaiian ecosystem. Rosemary Gillespie’s paper “A happy family: systematic revision of the endemic Theridion spiders of the Hawaiian Islands” is in the January 5th 2021 edition of Invertebrate Systematics. It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1071/IS20001

To learn more about Dr. Gillespie, follow her on Twitter @Berkeley_Evolab or Instagram @berkeley.evolab. You can also check out her website at https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/rosemary-g-gillespie . Follow the first author on the paper, Adrià Bellvert, on Twitter @AdriaBellvert, or follow the senior author, Dr. Miquel Arnedo, on Twitter @MiquelArnedo.