Jordan recently went to Israel to attend the Ecological Networks symposium (EcoNet2023) and took the opportunity beforehand to visit Efrat Gavish-Regev and her group at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (HUJI) who study arachnids from eco-evo-devo and natural history perspectives. Having long discussed working together, it was a great opportunity to get in the lab and analyse some spider and scorpion samples together with Yuval Zaltz, a master’s student in Efrat’s lab, and Evgenia Propistsova, a PhD student in Efrat’s lab. We had the pleasure of working in the lab of Gila Kahila Bar-Gal in The Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, where we had everything we needed to get stuck in.
It was a great pleasure working in the lab with Efrat, Yuval and Evgenia – truly a dream team! We managed to analyse the gut contents of close to 200 spiders and scorpions in the few days we were together, so now we’re looking forward to going through the data and finding out what they had eaten!
It would be wrong to be that close and not pop into the National Natural History Collections! Efrat showed the incredible range of specimens, from solifuges and scorpions to spiders and pseudoscorpions. The collections truly are an astonishing resource packed with potential for some exceptional scientific discoveries and insights.
It was then time for EcoNet2023, hosted by Shai Pilosof and team at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva. The campus was an exceptional location for the conference, Be’er Sheva apparently being referred to as the capital of the Negev desert. The programme was jam-packed with incredible talks from network ecologists across the globe, both empirical and theoretical.
Alongside the excellent talks, there were workshop discussions on applications of networks to food security, predicting interactions following environmental change, network stability theory and the evolution of networks. Deep dive sessions also took a closer look at social-ecological networks, and linking models and data. There was a lot to take in and even more to take away!
Another highlight was the opportunity to explore deep into the Negev desert in the Ein Avdat National Park on a hike. The scenery was truly exceptional, and seeing vultures, ibex and even crabs (yes, in the desert) was truly a treat!
The other exciting news from EcoNet2023 is that EcoNet2025 will take place in Newcastle! Jordan will be helping Darren Evans and the Network Ecology Group organise an exciting programme for September 2025!
Foraging Ecology Research Group 
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