Weekend with Frank Starmer: avid spider photographer

Drawn to the web
Frank Starmer has been avidly photographing spiders for the past six years. And it all began when he met a spider named Natasha.
Cheah Ui-Hoon, Business Times 27 Dec 08;

Frank Starmer
Associate Dean of Learning Technologies,
Duke-Nus Graduate
Medical School

Spiders are everywhere in Singapore, he points out.

DURING the week, Frank Starmer puts together Web-based learning programmes on the Internet. In his free time, he checks out the real web-weavers in nature. Photographing spiders has been a hobby for six years now for the associate dean of learning technologies at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.

It started when he was living in Charlston, South Carolina, when a large banana spider (also known as a golden silk spider) appeared in his garden one day. 'Each morning on my way to work, I would walk past her large web (about three metres in diameter) and usually she was doing something. Soon I realised that she was doing the same thing each morning when I passed by, re-weaving half her web. Today the left half, tomorrow, the right half,' he relates.

This predictable behaviour so fascinated him that he started photographing and videoing it to share with his grandchildren, putting it on a webpage. 'Natasha' the spider eventually became the neighbourhood attraction, and even appeared on national TV as Dr Starmer's video on her was featured in a Discovery's Super Hero Science programme.

'Soon, I was trapped by the challenge of how to photograph something moving and fascinated by the behaviour exhibited by the spider as it rebuilds its web, captures prey and processes captured insects,' says the North Carolinian who joined Duke's department of medicine (cardiology) in 1966 and was the first PhD in a clinical department there. His research was focused initially on clinical databases and later on how anti-arrhythmic drugs work.

Dr Starmer, 67, who moved to Singapore three years ago, now spends several hours each Saturday morning looking for insects to photograph with his Nikon D300 and a Tamron 180mm macro lens.

When he first started, he visited MacRitchie Reservoir several times, as well as the Botanic Gardens, Pulau Ubin, Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and Bukit Timah.

Now, though, his favourite weekend spot is the forest between McDonald's at Queensway and Margaret Drive (at Queensway Secondary School) where he once chanced upon several different spiders, butterflies and dragonflies. 'By visiting the same place every weekend, I would observe behaviour - which was actually more interesting than taking good photos,' says the professor, who has also worked in Moscow and Chennai.

In reality, spiders are everywhere in Singapore, he points out. Some interesting ones that he has found include the Gasteracantha mammosa that has little horns (near the carpark at SGH's Block B); a large banana spider (Nephila clavipes) halfway between the Botanic Gardens and Tanglin Mall; and the most unique, the Miagrammope which looks like a twig, and has a single-strand web.

'The most interesting time to look for spiders is around sunrise and sunset,' he says, as many spiders are nocturnal - hunting by night and sleeping by day. 'In fact, they often eat their web in the morning, find a sleeping place, then as the sun sets, they rebuild their web in virtually the same place,' he shares. 'I also like to visit my spider place after a storm and see if spiders are busy rebuilding their web.'

By now, he's figured out that the best way to find a spider is to look for sunlight reflected on the silky strand of web.

Though not claiming to be a spider expert, Dr Starmer has learnt some fascinating facts about spiders. Like how the male Nephila approaches the female from the top and taps one of her rear legs when he wants to mate. And if she doesn't want to, she gives him the brush-off. When she finally agrees, he starts weaving a carpet of silk on the upper side of her abdomen and on the top of her head. That supposedly calms the female, he found out from fellow spider enthusiasts.

Some of his best photographs may not be of the 'big' spider, but the little one. The Argyrodes flavescens, for example, is a klepto-parasite which lives in the web of the Nephila. 'They steal food from the hostess (hence klepto and parasite) and when there is no food to steal, they harvest and eat the web and glue. Their abdomen is highly polished and, when everything is just perfect, you can see a reflection of the sky on her abdomen,' says Dr Starmer who's managed to get several photos of this over the past three years here.

For one whose job is to make learning fun and to build a learning portal on the Internet that facilitates learning, it's no surprise that he constantly writes about his spider adventures and uploads photographs in his website (see http://frank.itlab.us/photo_essays/) for the benefit of his grandchildren in the US and the world at large.

Dr Starmer's familiarity with the Internet is unusual for someone of his vintage, and that's because he was one of the pioneers of Duke's computer science department in 1971 up till 1997. 'I had one foot in computer science and the other foot in cardiology,' he quips. Several students had started UseNet in the late 1970s, which was his introduction to the power of the Internet, he explains.

Now, his latest hobby strikes a poetic parallel - as he photographs spiders, he's also adding strands of knowledge and content on the World Wide Web.