Christopher Buddle is a fan of spiders.

The McGill professor and head of the Arthropod Ecology Laboratory, is also the editor-in-chief of The Canadian Entomologist and handles spiders every day. His lab features more than 300 species of spiders from across North America.

OpenFile Montreal spoke to Buddle about his ongoing research and his lab.

What is the main research that goes on in your lab?

My lab is largely interested in studying the diversity of arthropods, which are insects and spiders, from a lot of different types of habitats, including, for example, tree canopies and the high arctic tundra. Some of the research is also about how environmental changes might be affecting biodiversity, and we use insects and spiders as one way to monitor this change. Some of my work is also concerned with how generalist predators, such as spiders, help to control the populations of some pests in agroecosystems.

One bigger project ongoing in the lab is the northern biodiversity program which is focused on understanding the diversity of insects and spiders in Northern Canada.

What's an average day at your lab like?

My role in my laboratory is more along the lines of supervising graduate students and supervising research projects (and writing grants to keep the research moving forward). However, every day there are students in my laboratory who are working on the microscopes, identifying spiders (and other arthropods too), putting on labels, dropping them into vials, entering data, doing data analysis, and writing the research results for eventual publication.

Most people hate spiders but they are an important part of the environment, why?

Spiders are very important because they contribute to various ecosystem processes. For example, they can indirectly affect how leaf litter decomposes because they feed on the organisms that directly decompose leaf litter. Spiders are also important generalist predators, they feed upon many species, including economically-important pests in various systems (e.g., apple orchards, soybean crops, etc).

Spiders also are an important food source for highly valued vertebrates. For example, our laboratory has good evidence that birds living in forest canopies in the Montreal area eat a lot of spiders!

What's the most common misconception you've encountered about spiders?

There are a lot of misconceptions about spiders. The most common is the idea that spiders frequently bite people – they do not. Most so-called spider bites are caused by something else. Spiders generally have no interest in biting us, and would rather feed upon invertebrates. I have been working with spiders for over 15 years, and I have handled many, many kinds of live spiders and I have never been attacked by a spider.