At a time when the plan­et's bio­di­ver­si­ty is un­der threat as habi­tats are be­ing rapid­ly cleared, many species be­come ex­tinct be­fore their ex­is­tence is even dis­cov­ered. For many that are record­ed, lit­tle or noth­ing is known of their ecol­o­gy or be­hav­iour. This sit­u­a­tion is es­pe­cial­ly true of Neotrop­i­cal species. Jo-Anne Ni­na Sewlal, a PhD stu­dent at the De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, Trinidad adds to the body of lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject with her book Ecol­o­gy of Web-Build­ing Spi­ders: Fo­cus on Four Neotrop­i­cal Species. This book con­sists of a se­ries of stud­ies on four species found in Trinidad.

The ma­jor fo­cus is on the species Mesabo­li­var au­ran­ti­a­cus and its re­la­tion­ship with its mi­cro­hab­i­tat, as well as oth­er or­gan­isms that share this habi­tat and its web, in­clud­ing the spi­der Azil­ia va­choni. Notes on the web struc­ture of Physo­cy­clus glo­bo­sus and an ag­gre­ga­tion of the se­mi-so­cial taran­tu­la Is­chnothele cau­da­ta are al­so in­clud­ed.

It is hoped that this book will serve to fill the gap in knowl­edge of the spi­der fau­na of this re­gion and will be use­ful to the na­ture en­thu­si­ast and sci­en­tist alike in learn­ing about the ecol­o­gy and be­hav­iour of some of this re­gion's unique spi­ders.

Sewlal al­so holds BSc and MPhil de­grees from UWI. Her PhD dis­ser­ta­tion fo­cus­es on bio­di­ver­si­ty, with re­spect to three orb-weav­ing spi­der fam­i­lies in Trinidad but she has al­so con­duct­ed re­search on the spi­der fau­na on some of the�East­ern�Caribbean�Is­lands, in­clud­ing An­guil­la, An­tigua, Nevis, St Kitts, Grena­da and Montser­rat. She is al­so the au­thor of 20 sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions and more than 200 gen­er­al pub­li­ca­tions and serves as a ref­er­ee for two in­ter­na­tion­al peer-re­viewed jour­nals. Sewlal writes a week­ly col­umn on en­vi­ron­men­tal and na­ture in one of the na­tion­al week­ly news­pa­pers on be­half of the NGO En­vi­ron­ment To­ba­go, and is the ed­i­tor of the quar­ter­ly newslet­ter for the same NGO.

Sewlal was al­so one of the first par­tic­i­pants se­lect­ed for the In­ter­na­tion­al Dar­win Schol­ar­ship Pro­gramme last year by the Field Stud­ies Coun­cil. She is al­so a Fel­low of the Lin­naean So­ci­ety of Lon­don and a mem­ber of the So­ci­ety of Bi­ol­o­gy, Roy­al En­to­mo­log­i­cal So­ci­ety and Amer­i­can Arach­no­log­i­cal So­ci­ety, from which she re­ceived a record three con­sec­u­tive Vin­cent Roth Awards, a first for the So­ci­ety.