Spiders

Cannibal spiders: Research by U of T's Maydianne Andrade featured in Wall Street Journal

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 19:33:31 +0000

Cannibal spiders: Research by U of T's Maydianne Andrade featured in Wall Street Journal

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 06/08/2022 - 15:33

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(Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

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Our Community

Research & Innovation

Spiders

U of T Scarborough

Research by Maydianne Andrade, professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough, is helping to explain why some male spiders benefit from elaborately killing themselves during sex.

An excerpt from an essay written by Lucy Cooke that was published in the Wall Street Journal discusses how the Australian redback spider – one of many Andrade has researched – goes to great acrobatic lengths to become a meal for his mate.

The article notes that Andrade, a Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology, has proven that the suicidal spiders have an advantage in the evolutionary world. That’s because female spiders often mate with several males in a row, but eating a mate makes the sex last longer, giving the male extra time to fertilize more eggs. The female is also more likely to sit back and digest her meal, rather than immediately look for another male. However, Andrade’s lab has also discovered that some males escape with their lives by mating with immature females that aren’t yet experienced in eating their partners.

U of T faculty lend expertise on ROM exhibit challenging our phobia of spiders

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 16:18:23 +0000

U of T faculty lend expertise on ROM exhibit challenging our phobia of spiders

noreen.rasbach Fri, 07/27/2018 - 12:18

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Spiders: Fear and Fascination, the new exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), challenges one of the most common phobias in western society (photo by Sean McCann)

Alexa Battler

Topic

City & Culture

Cities

Ecology & Environmental Biology

Spiders

U of T Scarborough

Knowing that students were afraid of the many pictures of spiders in her office, Maydianne Andrade, a professor and vice-dean at the University of Scarborough, started to have meetings in the library instead.

“Their biology, their anatomy, their behaviour – everything is foreign to us,” says Andrade, a world-renowned expert on the mating habits of cannibalistic spiders.

“It’s different and it’s novel and it’s alien. And yet, they live on this planet and are integral parts of our ecology and food web.”

She finds spiders capitvating, but many people don't. Challenging fear of spiders, one of the most common phobias in western society, is a key goal of Spiders: Fear and Fascination, the new exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), on display until Jan. 6.

A look at the ROM exhibit, which also includes 20 displays of live spiders (photo by Brian Boyle)

The exhibit travelled from the Australian Museum, where it is titled Spiders – Alive and Deadly (deadly is slang for “great” in Australia). Douglas Currie, an associate professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at U of T and vice-president of the department of natural history at the ROM, played a pivotal role in bringing the exhibit to Toronto.

“A lot of people declared they would never visit the exhibit,” says Currie. “But with the way it’s laid out, people do feel sort of emboldened to come down and explore it – and come out better for it, I think.”

Andrade, who is also a research associate of the ROM, says fear of spiders is likely learned. From the time Andrade’s two kids were in kindergarten, she gave yearly outreach presentations with spiders in their classes and only a few children appeared afraid in the early years. But this comfort is precarious, she says. “All it takes is for one or two adults to show an aversive response in the presence of a child for the child to develop this aversion as well.”

The ROM exhibit includes the Golden Cape (pictured left), the largest piece of cloth made entirely out of spider silk. It is only the second time the garment, made from the silk of 1.2 million Golden Orb spiders, has been exhibited (photo by Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley)

The exhibit, which features more than 400 live and preserved spiders, invites visitors to confront their misconceptions and fears.

Several components were added for the Canadian version of the display, many of which came from the ROM’s own collection. A dreamcatcher (which is modelled on spider webs) and a spider-themed Lakota saddlebag were added as examples of the significance of spiders in Indigenous cultures. Visitors can also find an art piece on loan from the Art Gallery of Ontario depicting Anansi, an African folktale character that often appears as a spider.

As part of the exhibit, Andrade gave a talk on spider mating habits, with a focus on Black Widows. The talk was titled Through a Web Darkly, a nod to the 1961 film Through a Glass Darkly, in which a woman hallucinates that God is a spider living under her wallpaper. Andrade began her lecture by talking about spiders in popular culture, saying negative media representations likely play a role in learning to fear spiders.

For a contemporary element, and as a relatively rare example of positive representations, the exhibit includes the original Marvel comic books where Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Black Widow first appeared.

“Spider-Man’s abilities are based on things spiders can actually do, and if you were to scale them up to Spider-Man size, I think they would do even more spectacular things than he does,” says Andrade.

Currie says his favourite parts of the exhibit are the 20 displays of live spiders, including the Spider Lab, where twice a day guests can watch as spiders and scorpions are milked for their venom, which is used for biomedical research. Visitors can then speak with the exhibit’s “Spider Wranglers.”

“That’s sort of an interactive element that you don’t often see,” says Currie. "So is the fact that we have live specimens.

“This is something that you normally find in a zoo, but not in a museum setting.”

He says the reception for the exhibit has been great so far.

“A major part of any exhibit is not only to inform visitors about the diversity and biology of spiders, but dispel any misconceptions,” says Currie. “If we can fill that role and encourage people to come and challenge their fears, then we’ve done a very important part of our job.”

U of T study on redback spiders finds seemingly abhorrent mating strategy appears to benefit both males and females

rasbachn — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 15:57:04 +0000

U of T study on redback spiders finds seemingly abhorrent mating strategy appears to benefit both males and females

rasbachn Tue, 12/12/2017 - 10:57

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(photo by Ken Jones)

Topic

Breaking Research

Life Sciences

Maydianne Andrade

Research & Innovation

Spiders

U of T Scarborough

A mating strategy among redback spiders where males seek out immature females appears to benefit both sexes, a new University of Toronto study has found.

“There’s no evidence to suggest this behaviour is costly to females in terms of survivorship and reproductive output,” says Luciana Baruffaldi, post-doctoral researcher and director of the Andrade lab at U of T Scarborough and lead author of the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The research builds on past work by the Andrade lab that found some male redback spiders will avoid being cannibalized by mating with immature females that are not experienced in eating their partners. For this study, they wanted to determine whether males mating with immature females was a sign of “coercion” – a male mating tactic that was costly to females.

At least superficially, the behaviour appeared to be against the female’s best interest. For one, males in this case mate with little investment in courtship, mating will sometimes injure females, while females will often attack potential mates, suggesting resistance.

But what they found was that being mated as an immature has no cost to females in terms of reproductive output or survival, and that females mating in this way do not signal for additional mates in the future.

“This early mating may be good for female redback spiders because in nature they’re at risk of not finding a mate at all,” says Baruffaldi.

Luciana Baruffaldi, director of the Andrade lab at U of T Scarborough and lead author of the research published in Scientific Reports (photo by Ken Jones)

Any delays in mating are costly for female redbacks. Not only do they lose out on potential offspring, past research has shown that unmated females have shorter lifespans than mated females, likely the result of having eggs that have to be maintained that can be a drain on their resources.

Redbacks, a species of venomous widow spiders, are one of few arachnids that engage in sexual cannibalism while mating. In fact, males have been observed to actively assist in being cannibalized by doing summersaults to place their abdomen over the adult female’s mouth. In the majority of cases, females will continue to eat the male even while they mate. But this seemingly extreme form of mating also appears to have advantages in terms of reproductive success.

Interested in publicly funded research in Canada? Learn more at U of T’s #supportthereport advocacy campaign

Professor Maydianne Andrade, co-author of the research and Baruffaldi’s thesis supervisor, says the behaviour needs to be considered in terms of its evolutionary consequences.

“When you study evolutionary ecology, there’s a temptation to ascribe human characteristics or judgments on the behaviour being observed,” says Andrade, a world-renowned expert on the mating habits of cannibalistic spiders.

“What we’re seeing could have more than one evolutionary implication, and even if it looks abhorrent to us, the evolutionary consequence can be positive for the animal engaging in that behaviour.”

Andrade says if we want to think about why a particular set of behaviours has evolved, the underlying question is how it may affect the reproductive success of the animal doing it.

“That’s the evolutionary currency – what’s playing out over time is the number of gene copies left behind in offspring,” she says.

Read the fully study in the journal Scientific Reports

“If there’s a behaviour that increases how many gene copies are left, this means more offspring showing the same traits as their parents, and that’s the behaviour we expect to see.”

The study received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the Canada Research Chairs Program.

U of T Scarborough lab brings in high school students for research opportunities

ullahnor — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:26:23 +0000

U of T Scarborough lab brings in high school students for research opportunities

ullahnor Thu, 03/02/2017 - 14:26

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Fourth-year neuroscience and health studies student Rishawn Dhir first got introduced to university through a high school co-op program that had him researching in the Andrade Lab at U of T Scarborough (photo by Raquel Russell)

Raquel A. Russell

Author legacy

Raquel Russell

Topic

In 2014, Rishawn Dhir’s high school co-op program placed him in the lab of Professor Maydianne Andrade at U of T Scarborough. Little did the eleventh grader know the impact it would have on his academic future.

“The co-op program changed my opinion of university,” says Dhir, who is now a fourth-year neuroscience and health studies student at U of T Scarborough.

“It made me realize that within a lab there are many opportunities, not only for research but to work with other people, to take leadership opportunities and to develop as an individual.”

Since 2012, the high school co-op program has been part of the Andrade Lab, renowned for its primary subjects – black widow spiders. The lab, led by Andrade, a biology professor, explores the mating habits of cannibalistic spiders.

Professor Maydianne Andrade (right) with a student in her lab (photo by Ken Jones)

While U of T Scarborough has a robust set of co-op programs for undergraduate students, the Andrade Lab is one of the few to adapt the plan for Grade 11 and 12 high school students.

“Incorporating high school students is a great way to increase pipelines into the university,” says Andrade. “People in local schools should be aware of what we’re doing here. Co-op high school students are looking for a meaningful experience and to be honest – we need help,” she says.

Today, Dhir leads a team that provides mentorship and discussion between undergraduates and their former high schools. He attributes much of his passion for the program to his experience as a high school student in the lab.

Some of that experience is grunt work – high school students like undergraduates clean spider compartments and help with the practical running of the lab.

After being prepared for working with black widows, students like Danilo Piljevic, an eleventh grader, then get to help with feedings.

“As a Grade 11 student who’s going to apply to university next year, it’s great to have this array of options of people I can talk to, see what it’s like, and see what programs are good for me and which aren’t,” says Piljevic, who attends A.Y. Jackson Secondary School in Scarborough.

Piljevic adds that for three to four hours a week he gets to see if this is something he could imagine himself doing for the rest of his life.

Andrade appreciates the doors the program opens for students.

“We’re connecting with students who are perhaps uncertain about going to university or want to feel their way into whether they want to do biology or something different,” says Andrade.

The structure of the lab allows high schoolers new to the program a chance to work with more senior students, and more motivated senior students area allowed to manage lab assistants or do independent research.

Dhir become a leader in the lab and says it helped build his confidence. After the program, he volunteered during the summer and became a lab assistant.

“I felt confident enough from my experiences to get involved through numerous councils in first year and then creating my own in second year,” says Dhir.

“There are many opportunities for you here as long as you’re confident, push yourself and go out there and look,” he says. “You’ll find them if you try,” says Haneen Altahir, a third-year biochemistry and environmental science student, who also went through the high school co-op program.

Like Dhir, networking with fellow lab personnel and being on campus influenced her university decision.

“After coming to U of T Scarborough every day for co-op, I could imagine being a student here,” she says. “It’s such a community school, and I really wanted to be a part of that.”

Meet U of T Scarborough's new vice-dean, faculty affairs & equity

ullahnor — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 21:30:12 +0000

Meet U of T Scarborough's new vice-dean, faculty affairs & equity

ullahnor Mon, 01/16/2017 - 16:30

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

Subheadline

Professor Maydianne Andrade is known for her research on the mating habits of cannibalistic spiders

Professor Maydianne Andrade is meticulous in her research on the mating habits of cannibalistic spiders. Like any renowned scientist, she lets the data do the talking.

In her new role as U of T Scarborough's vice-dean, faculty affairs & equity, she plans on doing much of the same. Her plan is to take a data driven approach to figuring out ways U of T Scarborough can do a better job in hiring, developing and promoting its faculty while also ensuring these processes maximize transparency and minimize the unintended effects of unconscious bias.

Andrade, who began her new role on Jan. 1 spoke to U of T's Don Campbell about being a black woman in academia, her priorities, and what she’s looking forward to most in the new position.

Read about U of T's efforts on gender and racial equity

You’ve already had a distinguished career as a researcher, but what attracted you to this role in particular?

From the first day I walked into my office as a new faculty member, being a black woman in this position meant I was unusual.

I was asked many times to give talks about being a woman and visible minority in academia, as well as about equity and diversity. I always said no because I felt it wasn’t in my area of expertise. As I advanced in my career that changed, especially after becoming a Canada Research Chair. It became clear to me that although people are trying to change things for the better, change is happening very slowly, if at all. I became very interested in the literature on challenges to equity and representation.

Read about her research

From reading the literature I was surprised at the magnitude of the effect of unconscious bias on our ability to judge each other fairly. I had heard about bias before, but usually in a descriptive way and with a focus on the individual experiences of those who are directly affected. It is important to understand this perspective, but I think it’s important for people to also understand that the overall effect is measurable, serious and can have a significant effect on how our institutions function.

About six years ago, I started saying yes and began giving talks about just how strong these effects are, and how they can manifest in our everyday working lives. I have found people surprisingly receptive. It’s like bias was the elephant in the room. Once it’s named – and it’s clear that we all have biases – the focus can shift to one that is proactive and positive.

Hear her talk about unconscious bias

What will this new role entail?

I will be helping with the mechanistic aspects of faculty hiring and promotion. This will include overseeing procedural aspects of faculty searches, appointments, tenure and promotion but also providing tools that will help with these processes. The more innovative side is fostering development opportunities for our faculty. This will start with recruitment – working to broaden our applicant pools, making it clear why UTSC is a fantastic place to be and ensuring that people have the right mentorship and support once they are here. Much of this will need to be data-driven so I will need to get a complete picture of our faculty, the challenges and aspirations they have and what barriers they may face in career advancement.

The role also supports UTSC’s aspiration to increase the diversity of people working here and making sure there’s a climate that they are happy to work in and where they will flourish. Achieving this will require taking some lessons from the literature on unconscious bias and ensuring our search and promotion procedures are fair and equitable.

Even though we tend to focus on race and gender, clearly there is a wider range of diversity that we wish to have represented here. Unfortunately, there may be a similar diversity of unrecognized biases that cannot be anticipated. The key then is to ensure fair, transparent processes and that everyone understands that this goal is at the heart of the procedures we follow.

What will be your first priorities?

First of all, I hope to develop pragmatic tools that will help departments in a discipline-specific way to increase the diversity of applicants they are considering. I will also provide the information needed to make it easier to hold a transparent search that avoids unintended biases.

Second, I really want to tackle mentorship and support for all faculty who are already here.

There is considerable data showing that mentorship can increase career satisfaction, productivity, and progress. While most departments at UTSC have some sort of mentorship policy, all may not be effective. On top of that, Professor Myrna Simpson proposed an idea that I really like and that is creating a cross-discipline mentorship network. Sometimes, someone from another department at a slightly more advanced career stage can offer great advice. This effort will start by inviting faculty to tell me what they think would be most effective and working from there.

What are you most looking forward to in this role?

I think the potential to make real and positive change. I’m really looking forward to meeting with different departments and getting to know their cultures. I want to visit them as soon as possible now that the new term has started. I need to know about their plans, their expectations and challenges.

Although I know UTSC and the larger university culture very well, I do feel like I exist in a bubble in terms of research and teaching aspirations. I spend a lot of time with my students and we all like spiders (laughs), or I spend a lot of time with other biologists, who are also a unique lot (laughs again). It will no doubt be a learning experience. I don’t expect to get it right all the time right away, but I promise to learn from the process and from those I meet. I’m looking forward to making connections and seeing how I can shape structures that will help.

There have been notable examples recently of misogyny, racism, and homophobia in North America. There’s also been a bit of a mainstream backlash against the perceived overreach of political correctness. How do you view your role given the current climate?

I would say that is part of the reason I was interested in the role. I think giving prominence to equity is important in the current climate. In academia, we really do live in a bubble, but even within this bubble, there are challenges to equity coming from a variety of directions.

I think we need to emphasize fairness, particularly at a time when more people are finding it easier to say they don’t support fairness in society. Certain people have been open about saying certain groups can and should be excluded from being treated fairly. We need to be equally firm in asserting our core values. I use bullying as an example. Now it’s widely regarded as abhorrent and rightly so. But when I was younger, bullies were common at school and hardly spoken about negatively. In one generation it has become totally unacceptable.

Unfortunately, that goes both ways. If we don’t find some way to adjust the conversation, I’m afraid the ugliness we’re seeing now will only get worse.

What do like most about working at the university?

Since I started here it’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be. The university is an amazing place.

The students at UTSC are spectacular. They’re interested. They come from diverse backgrounds, are respectful of others, and on the whole I feel we’re respectful to them in return, even while challenging them to think about things in new ways. I truly believe we’re a community that is more interested in meeting and talking out differences rather than fighting. I think UTSC can make positive changes, and not just these end points, but the process in getting there can be positive as well.

How do male black widow spiders find a mate? Competition is "extremely fierce," U of T researcher says

lavende4 — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 14:46:41 +0000

How do male black widow spiders find a mate? Competition is "extremely fierce," U of T researcher says

lavende4 Tue, 10/18/2016 - 10:46

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(All photos by Sean McCann)

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

The life of a male black widow spider isn’t easy.

Not only do they make perilously long journeys to find a mate – avoiding rival males along the way – but once they find a possible mate, there’s a risk of being eaten alive.

So how do male black widow spiders, without the aid of good sight or hearing, find their mates across great distances? It’s a question that Catherine Scott, a PhD candidate in Professor Maydianne Andrade’s lab at University of Toronto Scarborough, intends to answer.

“Competition among male black widows is extremely fierce,” she says.

“One experiment we ran found that as many as 40 males arrive at a female’s web in just one night. We want to find out how these spiders use chemical cues produced by their rivals to gain a competitive advantage in everything from the timing of their development to their ability to locate a potential mate.”

Recent research in Andrade’s lab found that some male black widow spiders can mate with immature females, which may allow them to mate more quickly and more often. But little is known about how males find these females, Scott notes.

“There is still so much to learn about these spiders, and fieldwork is crucial for making new discoveries while also supporting or challenging what we know from lab experiments,” she says.

In order to successfully complete her research, Scott needs to go back into the field and conduct experiments at the right time of the year. But that's not as simple as it sounds.

“It’s simply not safe to be alone in the field conducting research on black widow spiders at night because they’re venomous,” says Andrade.

One solution would be to hire an assistant. The research is being supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) grant, Andrade says, but since the grant is late in its five-year cycle, there are limited ways to come up with new funds to pay for a research assistant. So she started a crowd-funding campaign and is looking to the public for support.

While the immediate goal of the research is to see how the male spiders use chemical cues to avoid or succeed in competing with rival males, the research could also have important practical applications. The findings could help in developing a pesticide-free way to control black widow spiders, an important outcome since their venom is neurotoxic to humans.

Those who contribute to the campaign, which has a $6,000 goal, can follow the project with regular updates and photos from the field, and will see how their contribution is making a difference in the research. The public has already responded strongly – the campaign reached more than 50 per cent of its target in a little more than a week.

“This is an exciting new way to get those interested in science to support and become engaged in our work,” says Scott.

Spiders

Cannibal spiders: Research by U of T's Maydianne Andrade featured in Wall Street Journal

Read more in the Wall Street Journal (paywall)

U of T faculty lend expertise on ROM exhibit challenging our phobia of spiders

U of T study on redback spiders finds seemingly abhorrent mating strategy appears to benefit both males and females

Interested in publicly funded research in Canada? Learn more at U of T’s #supportthereport advocacy campaign

Read more about U of T's Maydianne Andrade and her lab

Read the fully study in the journal Scientific Reports

U of T Scarborough lab brings in high school students for research opportunities

Meet U of T Scarborough's new vice-dean, faculty affairs & equity

Read about U of T's efforts on gender and racial equity

Read about her research

Hear her talk about unconscious bias

How do male black widow spiders find a mate? Competition is "extremely fierce," U of T researcher says