I have a passion for spiders, particularly widow spiders, which are the focus of my Ph.D. research. My work focusses on phylogeography, , population genetics and visual opsins of widow spiders. I am working during the summer months completing my dissertation, and I work full time as an educator during the high school year. I am a member of  the Andrade Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough (http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/labs/andrade/) where I am surrounded by bright and passionate behavioural arachnologists who study sexual selection, sex pheromones, causes and consequences of male phenotypic variation, personality, and intrasexual signaling! The same adjectives could be used to describe my lab mates from the Lovejoy Lab (where I am also a member); however, they study molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of electric fishes and morphological trait evolution in stingrays and macroecological trends in fish systems. My Ph.D. work has been, and continues to be an amazing adventure!