Anchorage Daily News

When she was a kid growing up in Salcha, Brandi Fleshman was terrified of spiders. The thought of the little arachnids crawling out of the shadows sent chills chasing across her skin.

It's certainly hard to believe that today, especially when you see Fleshman surrounded by hundreds of spider specimens in a university lab, letting a 6-inch chaco golden knee tarantula crawl on her hands and up her arms.

Bob the tarantula is her pet. The spider specimens floating in alcohol in the University of Alaska Museum of the North's entomology lab are her work.

Fleshman, an undergrad at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has gained national recognition for her work identifying and cataloging the more than 460 species of spiders in Alaska.

Since January, Fleshman, 22, has been working on a detailed list of spiders found in the state. She's scoured thousands of pages of scientific literature published by other Alaska entomologists over the years documenting spiders in various parts of the state. She also collected her own samples from the Interior, capturing spiders in makeshift pit-fall traps -- actually just 16-ounce deli cups filled with propylene glycol, a chemical that kills and preserves the spiders.

The list she's put together includes the spiders' names, where in Alaska they are known to live and a collection of other ecological data. Hers is the first such list in 60 years.

"The only checklist of Alaska spiders that has been published was from 1947," she said. "Obviously it was pretty out of date."

The 1947 list had 247 species on it. So far, Fleshman has documented 464 species here. Fourteen of those are ones that until now scientists hadn't even known lived here.

People are often surprised, Fleshman said, to learn there are so many different types of spiders in Alaska. She's even spoken to people who are convinced that there aren't any spiders this far north.

"They tend to be smaller here," she said. "But we do still have some larger-bodied ones. We have one fishing spider. They can eat tadpoles and stuff."

Fleshman is hopeful that her work will be useful to other scientists in coming years.

"This list will be really important for anybody who wants to study spiders for any other projects," she said. "It's important for ecological-change studies because we really can't tell if the fauna is changed (due to global warming or other environmental changes) if we never knew what the fauna was."

Derek Sikes, the curator of insects at the museum, said it's fairly rare for someone to be as engrossed with spiders as Fleshman is.

"Having somebody be interested in spiders is just remarkable," he said. "There's just a lot of orphaned groups out there, a lot of animal groups that people don't in general have much interest in."

There are no researchers on staff at the museum who specialize in spiders. In fact, the museum has for years had a large collection of spiders just floating in jars that no one bothered to identify. Fleshman has set herself to the task.

That sort of focused interest and enthusiasm is rare in an undergraduate student, Sikes said. Fleshman has one class left before she graduates.

"Undergraduates may have great enthusiasm to work in a laboratory, but Brandi is different in that she's got her own project and it's something that she got her own money for and has been able to accomplish in a very skilled way," he said. "We're hoping that she goes that route (to pursue her graduate degree at UAF) because she's certainly got the attributes of a graduate student already. Not the full training, but the drive and the independence."

Recently, Fleshman had the opportunity to present her research at the national Sigma Xi conference in Florida. Not only was she awarded a first-place medal for her work, she was invited to join Sigma Xi, an international honor society for scientists and engineers. The honor puts her in good company. More than 200 Nobel laureates have been members of the organization.

It's a long way to come for a woman who hated spiders. As her tarantula, Bob, deftly crawled over her hands on a recent morning, Fleshman explained that it was tarantulas that first sparked her interest in the eight-legged creatures.

"I was scared of spiders when I was a kid, but tarantulas were bigger so they were cool," she said.

It was that wow factor that attracted her, she said. Growing up the fifth of 10 children, Fleshman had a menagerie of pets including rats and snakes.

"It was just anything that creeped people out," she said.

She begged her parents for two years to let her get a tarantula. Her father, who used to live in Oklahoma where tarantulas are a common, and dangerous, nuisance, finally acquiesced.

At one point she had seven of the tarantulas. Now she has two. Her husband, Oliver, has even started to warm up to the critters, she said.

"They're actually pretty good pets for college students," Fleshman said. "They don't need a lot of time commitment. If you forget to feed them from time to time they'll be OK. You don't need to take them out and walk them or anything like that."

Having a low-maintenance pet is a must right now in her life, Fleshman said. With classes, hours of work in the lab, and time spent with her husband building a house in North Pole there's not much time left over for pets or horseback riding or playing the guitar -- just a few of Fleshman's loves.

Fleshman always liked science. When she started at UAF she wanted to study wolves or bears but soon discovered her niche in the arachnid world. She says she develops strong attachments to her odd pets.

"You wouldn't think that spiders had personalities," she said. "But each one's different. Some you can handle and hold while some are pretty skittish. ... I always thought spiders would be my hobby on the side," she said. "It's just the coolest thing to be paid to identify spiders."

ADVERTISEMENT