Research
My research is at the intersection of fear and fascination—fossil spiders. While I still like spiders and rocks, I also pursue other research directions including academic support, pedagogy, and making classrooms and fieldwork more inclusive.
taphonomy
My main research pursuit is taphonomy, which lies at the intersection of many fields—geology, biology, chemistry, paleontology. I use quantitative, experimental, and chemical approaches to explore the exceptional means of preservation by which spiders are fossilized and investigate what the life and death of spiders tell us about the nature and controls on ancient environments.
My current research focuses on the complex microbiota-controlled taphonomic pathways that lead to the exceptional preservation of spiders in lacustrine deposits.
My research demonstrated that biases influencing fossil spider assemblages varies across lacustrine deposits in contrast to amber assemblages, and thus, different parts of ancient spider communities are sampled in the fossil record.
Through actualistic experiments on modern spiders and paleontological data from fossil spiders preserved in lacustrine deposits, I discovered that spider leg flexure (how curled the legs are) is a potential indicator for salinity.
A fossil spider from the Aix-en-Provence Formation (Oligocene) of France under UV light fluroesces bright orange.
The fossil spider Consteniusi leonae (Araneidae) from the Eocene Kishenehn Formation of Montana.
Fossil spiders
From a systematics focus, I work on describing fossil spiders from multiple lacustrine deposits around the world and throughout geologic time. While the focus of this research is taxonomy, I employed advanced analytical and imaging methods to get the most data possible from fossils. The oldest fossils in my work are from the Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil including the discovery of the oldest fossil spider of the Family Palpimanidae (spider-eating spiders), and first fossil spider of its kind from South America. The fossil has since been repatriated to Plácido Cidade Nuvens Paleontology Museum, in Santana do Cariri (CE), Brazil (Digging deeper into colonial palaeontological practices in modern day Mexico and Brazil—Cisneros et al. 2022)
Other taxonomic surveys focus on Cenozoic lacustrine deposits, including the first descriptions of fossil spiders from the Eocene Kishenehn Formation of Montana, and revisions of fossil spider taxonomy from the Green River Formation as well as Florissant Formation of Colorado (in prep). Fossil spiders plays an especially important role in phylogenetic analyses because the relationships of many groups within Araneae have complicated histories. Because fossil spiders are rare, collections and collaboration are a huge component of fossil spider taxonomy.