2026 Annual Meeting
Lincoln, Nebraska
12-16 Juy 2026
By the numbers: There were 164 attendees, including a dozen meeting volunteers from the Hebets lab. The 60 talks included three plenaries, several lightning talks, and Early Career Symposium presentations. There were 43 poster presentations. A pre-meeting “Eight-Legged Encounters” workshop, with 61 meeting attendees volunteering, drew 480 members of the public.
Plenary presentations:
Alfredo Peretti: “Rarity in Reproductive Biology: Arachnids as Insight.” watch video
Leticia Aviles: “Biology Meets Geometry: Web-Building Spiders' Solutions to the Tyranny of Geometry.” watch video
Muhammad Irfan (2025 Platnick Award Winner): “Unveiling Hidden Diversity: Advances in the Systematics and Taxonomy of Linyphiidae Spiders in China.” watch video
Student Presentation Awards winners:
First place – oral: Yihang Park for “Effects of Cannibalism Risk on the Ontogeny of Risk-Averse Behavior in Jumping Spiders.”
Second place – oral: Sophie Neu for “Disentangling the Role of Growth in Sequential Tarsomere Formation in the Harvestman Phalangium Opilio.”
First place – poster: Calvin Runnels for “Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis Reveals Signatures of Selection for Orb-Weaving Behavior in Spiders.”
Second place – poster: Jaclyn Mowry for “Utilizing the Spider Exposure Pathway to Estimate Mercury Contaminant Risk to Arachnivorous Birds in the Kalamazoo River Area of Concern.”
Early Career Symposium with extended presentations by Ryan Bacon, Joe Giulian, Emma Jochim, Kathryn Nagel, and Laura Segura.
Host:: Eileen Hebets, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Logistics organizer: Michael Bergland-Riese, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Thanks to:
Scientific Program Committee: Eileen Hebets, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Marc Milne, University of Indianapolis, and Marshal Hedin, San Diego State University.
Travel Grant Committee: Marc Milne, University of Indianapolis, and Angela Chuang, Washington College.
Research Grant Committee chair: Matthew R. Graham, Eastern Connecticut State University.
Student Competition Committee chair: Anne Danielson-Francois, University of Michigan – Dearborn, and to colleagues serving as judges for the student awards.
AAS webmaster: Nina Sandlin, Field Museum of Natural History.
Thanks also to officers of the AAS for their assistance.
Meeting Group Photo
Thank you to our meeting donors
The AAS is grateful to a number of UNL organizations and centers for providing generous support for this meeting Office of Research and Innovation Torque Park Citizen Science Center, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, College of Engineering, School of Biological Sciences, Office of Graduate Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor, and the Center for Great Plains Studies; and to:Nebraska EPSCoR and Arthropoda MDPI.
Several individual donors also provided support: Christopher Malloy, Jason Bond, Nadia Ayoub, Deborah Smith, Tsunemi Yamashita, Richard Bradley, Marc Milne, C. Neal McReynolds, Anne Danielson-Francois, and Laura Segura Hernández.