Melissa Bodner

Areas of Interest

I have over a decade of experience as a university-level lab-based educator, teaching various labs such as introductory biology, cell biology, genetics, microbiology, ecology, and animal behavior. My teaching philosophy focuses on creating an engaging and empowering environment to foster skills development and scientific inquiry. In my Master's research, I studied the biogeography of jumping spiders, a globally distributed and diverse family of spiders. I expanded the phylogenetic tree and used fossil spiders in amber to determine the age of their radiation. We also named a new subfamily of spiders previously undescribed from the forests of Central Africa (Gabon).