Caitlin will be graduating with a PhD at UNSW, studying an infamous species she grew up around, the Sydney Funnel Web spider. Her research investigates little known aspects of Atracid behaviour, ecology and biology using radio tracking systems to discover how far males travel to find females, and whether this movement is impacted by environmental conditions.

Topic: The love life of Funnel Web spiders- a Sydney romance. Caitlin will cover how the extremely venomous males of this species search and find their mates. She will also look at the preferred areas of burrow construction and the protection they might offer in extreme conditions such as low intensity bush fires, or heavy rain and flooding events.