The garden spider

For my behavioral ecology project, i am studying the Garden Spider, or araneus diadematus. I chose this arachnid because there are lots of them in my backyard, and the somber elegance of spiders has always intrigued me. In my backyard, the spiders stretch their webs between many of the plants and trees, mostly in the sunlight. I have found out some pretty crazy things about them from my observations, like how they sit perfectly still in their webs and use the construction of the web to sense where foreign objects.

Outside of the biological world (or at least the classroom), I enjoy playing water polo and lacrosse, and my favorite movie of all time is Top Gun.