Summer with spiders: High school student joins Saint Michael’s research

Windsor High School senior Ernest Hodgdons of Windsor, Vermont, holds a beaker during his summer 2023 internship at Saint Michael’s College. (Photos courtesy Ernest Hodgdons)

This summer, Ernest Hodgdons, a high school senior at Windsor High School in Windsor, Vermont, scored a rare internship as one of the student-researchers in neuroscience Professors Ruth Fabian-Fine’s and Adam Weaver’s laboratory. Working alongside his sister, Taylor Galgay ’24, a neuroscience major with minors in philosophy and public health, Ernest observed and explored the spiders’ nervous systems.

Each year, student-researchers examine a new question pertaining to the neurology of these spiders. Most recently, the laboratory — which has employed dozens of student researchers over the past few years — has been using spiders’ nervous systems as a model for observing neurodegeneration to help solve why neurons degenerate in humans, causing life-altering illnesses such as Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Ernest is not squeamish. “Spiders always fascinated me,” he wrote in a recent submitted reflection, “and I have always admired their nature, but to dive into the neuroscientific aspects felt like a new adventure. The more I observed their actions and their ways of hunting, my uncertainty was replaced with a desire to learn more.”

One of the spiders in the neuroscience laboratory in which Ernest Hodgdons interned.

He especially enjoyed feeding them crickets — “some spiders would instantly pummel the crickets, meanwhile some spiders would wait and observe their prey before feasting upon them”— and learning about the neural pathways responsible for all of their movements and sensory perceptions, including their reactions to fellow spiders and breeding behaviors. All this careful observation led to a new appreciation: “These are beautiful creatures with such intelligent minds,” he wrote.

In the lab, Ernest learned new skills: micro-pipetting, anesthetization, and proper laboratory procedure. He got a taste of college science, and it sounds like he wants more. He said he plans to apply to Saint Michael’s this fall to hopefully be part of the Class of 2028.