Vanessa Penna Goncalves (she/her)

Meet our Plenary Speaker Daniela Rößler

Fueled by curiosity and a deep love of natural history Daniela discovered a REM-like sleep state in spiders and uses integrative field, lab and comparative approaches to investigate the function, ecology, and evolution of sleep across the spider tree of life.

Make sure you don’t miss our key dates for abstract submission and registration!

Such a great opportunity and an unforgettable experience to be part of this adventure with you all.
I was finally able to see a Portia in its natural habitat 🤩

Four people standing with the back to the camera - all wearing a t shirt with a print on the back that says “daintree national park” in the Jurassic park logo with the skeleton of a cassowary

A photo of a female Portia fimbriata on a green leaf

🎬 That’s a wrap! 🥹 after a bumpy last week off grid together with the fabulous @vanspidergirl.bsky.social & @madmetazoa.bsky.social we successfully finished an incredible field season on #portia and #invertsleep in the oldest rainforest of the world. Nothing but grateful for this experience ❤️

Male CNS Connectome A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

🕷️ I just talked to ABC Sydney Radio about the social spiders 🎉🎉🎉

Thanks ABC live Radio Sydney for the talk!

Secret spider societies reveal surprising brain differences Researchers peered inside the brains of huntsman and crab spiders using microCT scanners and found that while spiders' brains don't have to be bigger for them to live in groups, social spiders are wir...

phys.org/news/2025-09...

Thank you! It was pretty cool to do it. To study neuroscience in these little creatures is very challenging but everything we discovered on them is pretty much new. So very rewarding in the ending.

Wear it Purple!

Raising awareness about the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ communities! 💜💜💜💜

#macquarieuniversity

Volumetric Comparison of Overall Brain and Neuropil Size Between Social and Non‐social Spiders: Exploring the Social Brain Hypothesis Brain size may be influenced by the cognitive demands of sociality (social brain hypothesis). We used microCT to compare CNS and brain volumes in social versus solitary huntsman and crab spiders. Soc...

✨ It’s published! ✨

🕷️ Social spiders have bigger brains… but only in the right places! Our new study shows that in social huntsman spiders, regions for memory & vision processing are proportionally larger, supporting group living.

Read more: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...