Category: Secret Lives of Faculty Members

There’s so much more to Penn State Behrend’s faculty and staff members than what you see them doing on campus. In this occasional series, we take a look at some of the interesting, unconventional, and inspiring things that members of our Behrend community do in their free time. 

By Heather Cass
Publications Manager, Office of Strategic Communications, Penn State Behrend

Two of the most frightening things known to humans – advanced math and tarantulas – are some of Dr. Dan Galiffa’s favorite things. The associate professor of mathematics owns thirteen tarantulas and says the highly venomous spiders make great pets.

“They are one of cleanest and most fascinating animals,” Galiffa said, as his Honduran curlyhair “Curly” (Tliltocatl albopilosus), a thirteen-year-old tarantula about the size of his palm, slowly walks over and around his hand. “Each spider has a unique personality.”

Rosalinda, a Chilean rose, was his first tarantula. Galiffa acquired her eight years ago and liked her so much that he has since gathered twelve more tarantulas, for a total of thirteen spiders of twelve different species, including greenbottle blue, Venezuelan sun tiger, Costa Rican zebra, Chilean copper, Mexican red knee, Arizona blonde, Brazilian salmon pink, Columbian giant red leg, and Mexican red rump.

One of his most beautiful and exotic is Blue, a cobalt blue tarantula native to Myanmar and Thailand. As with most things in nature, the vibrant color is a warning.

“They’re high venomous, extremely fast-moving, and one of the most defensive species of tarantula,” he said. “Many people who own them don’t handle them.”

Galiffa does and said she is a calm and “sweet” spider. That said, he is always respectful of the spider’s space and temperament. No stranger to deep research, Galiffa has done his homework.

“I spend a lot of time learning about them, reading whatever I can find, including some scientific articles and papers that can be pretty specific,” he said. “But I actually did a lot of my mathematical research work in epidemiology, so I’m familiar with the biological science.”

There is much work to do in tarantula taxonomy. “Scientists are still learning a lot of basic things about them,” he said. “The classifications are still not solid.” He estimates there are more than 1,000 species of tarantulas and new discoveries lead to changes in taxonomy. “There are about 45,000 known spider species, in general,” he said.

We talked with Galiffa and Curly (though she was pretty quiet) to learn more about tarantulas and how they can sometimes serve as teaching aids.

What types of courses do you teach at Behrend?

The entire calculus sequence, differential equations, linear algebra, and other advanced math classes.

What is appealing to you about tarantulas?

They make really great pets. They are clean, quiet, easy to care for and they all have their own personalities. It is an exciting challenge to try and understand a species that is so far removed from humans. They communicate with their actions and behaviors.

Why do you think people are so afraid of spiders?

I think spiders get a bad rap. Anytime someone has an odd welt, and it has a visible hole, they call it a spider bite. I always ask the question, “Did you see the spider bite you?”  I’ve never had anyone say yes. More than likely, the injury was inflicted by a different insect. Spiders rarely bite unless they are directly threatened.

Where did you get your tarantulas?

I bought them at pet stores, online, and at exotic animal expos. A couple of them are rescues from people couldn’t care for them anymore.

What do they eat?

Worms, crickets, roaches. Basically, they eat anything alive that is smaller than they are. They only eat a few times a month.

You handle all of your tarantulas. Does each species feel different?

Oh, yes. The bristles can be soft, hard, very long, short, thick, or thin. Additionally, some tarantulas are much faster than others. Blue’s speed would blow you away. She could be on the other side of my office in seconds. The same is true of the Sun Tiger.

Are they venomous?

Yes, every one of them is venomous, but they are not aggressive. The venom is not all bad. It is used in some medicines, and it’s not lethal to humans.

What would happen if you got bit?

I have held my tarantulas thousands of times and have never been bitten. If someone were to get bitten, it would probably because they were careless in handling the spider.  In any event, there are two types of bites, dry and wet. A dry bite is a puncture wound from fangs. A wet bite is when the tarantula actually uses their venom. They rarely do that. They don’t even use venom when catching their prey unless it is absolutely necessary. A dry bite would be handled like any normal puncture wound with some antibiotic cream and a bandage. A wet bite should probably be seen by a doctor but, again, it’s rare and the venom is not lethal.

How long do they live?

Twenty to forty years with females living longer than males. I have eleven females and two males. When the males mature, they seek out females for mating and will die shortly after, so if a keeper has a male, it’s best to send him to a breeder after he matures.  I will have to do this with both of my males, and I’ll be very sad when that time comes. By the way, females can produce egg sacs with over 1,000 eggs!

You’ve used your tarantulas as teaching aids before in Behrend’s K-12 outreach programs. What do you teach with them?

There are many things we can teach with spiders – web strength and construction, genetics, population dynamics, gait analysis, and blood flow, which is quite fascinating in tarantulas since their blood flows through their entire body. They don’t have veins like humans do.

How can you use them to teach math modeling?

We can model them as predators and as prey. We can also study the genetic probability of obtaining certain variations of a given species using probabilistic models. For example, there are three forms of Chilean rose tarantulas – the gray, red, and pink color forms. My spider, Rosalinda, is gray form and Charlotte is a red form. The students in my workshops do a basic version of this very type of modeling and then get to see the differences in the color forms in my actual tarantulas.

Do you have any other pets?

I also have Madagascar hissing cockroaches and a skinny pig (hairless guinea pig) named Hamilton. I previously had two skinny pigs—Perry and Ty—who played games and did tricks.

What do you want people know about tarantulas beyond what we have covered above?

Here are some interesting facts:

• Tarantulas do have eight eyes, but scientists are not sure how well they see.
• Tarantulas have bristles, not hair. Only mammals have hair. The bristles give them a lot of information. So, yes, “spider senses” are a real thing, not just something made up for the Spider-Man comics.
• Tarantulas use their senses to assess everything that’s happening around them and they have amazing perception despite the fact that they cannot smell and have no ears.
• At the end of each of the tarantulas eight legs are two retractable claws, similar to those in a cat. They use these for mobility.
• In addition to their eight legs, they possess two pedipalps or additional appendages that are located at the front of their bodies.
• Since tarantulas are arthropods, they have to molt in order to grow. When a tarantula molts, it can often change color and grow exceedingly large.
• Tarantulas can spin webs. The webs are not like commonly seen ones used to catch prey but are used to line their burrows and keep them safe, for example, spinning a trip “wire” near their home to sense prey and potential predators.
• Tarantulas are opportunistic predators, which means they wait for the prey to come near their home, then attack it with extreme speed and accuracy.
• Tarantulas have a wide variety of coloration and patterns. They are quite stunning when viewed in the right light.

By Heather Cass

Publications & Design Coordinator, Penn State Behrend

There’s much more to Penn State Behrend’s faculty and staff members than what you see on campus. In this occasional series, we’ll take a look at some of the interesting, unconventional, and inspiring things that members of our Behrend community do in their free time.

NAME: Dr. Pam Silver

DAY JOB: Distinguished professor of biology, Penn State Behrend

SIDE GIG: Pipe Major, 96^th Highlanders Pipes & Drums Corp

If Dr. Pam Silver’s childhood had a soundtrack, it would be the humming drone and romantic skirl of the bagpipes.

“My earliest memories are of following my mother around the yard as she walked back and forth playing bagpipes,” she said.

It wasn’t long before Silver was squeezing her own set of pipes under her tiny arm.

“I started taking lessons when I was 7 and got my first pipes when I was 9,” Silver said. “I’ve been playing ever since.”

Today, she is the Pipe Major of the 96^th Highlanders Pipes & Drums, a pipe and drum corps that represents Jamestown and Chautauqua County, New York, at parades, festivals, and special events throughout the year.

Silver said her favorite music to play on the pipes is a trio of songs: Mrs. Joy Cairns, Rebecca’s Air, and Shoshanna’s Lullaby. Each of the songs is a tribute to women—wives, mothers, daughters.

“To me, that set is just one giant love song,” she said.

Speaking of love songs, Silver’s husband, Doug Clark, shares her passion for music. He is the drum sergeant in the 96^th Highlanders (that’s how they met). He runs a large Celtic festival every August in Mayville, New York. To coin a trite, but wholly appropriate phrase, they make beautiful music together.

In addition to her performances and practices with the 96^th Highlanders, Silver offers bagpipe lessons and takes on the occasional private gig, playing at weddings, parties, funerals, and, once, a bat mitzvah.

She’s also been known to liven things up in the School of Science with impromptu performances.

“When it’s been a long week, or when the students have been working really hard, I like to bring in my pipes and play a little,” she said. “It lifts spirits and makes a lot of noise.”

ON THE CREATIVITY OF SCIENTISTS:

“People sometimes think science is about memorizing facts, but it’s really about discovering facts and wringing answers out of nature,” she said. “When you have a scientific question, it takes a lot of creativity to find the answer to it.”

FROM BLOOD TO BIO:

“I worked as a medical technologist at a blood bank in Florida for ten years while I raised my sons. When they got older, I decided to go back to grad school to be an ecologist, but I never could learn to like the Florida heat. I grew up in rural New Jersey, so I was happy to move back to the Northeast to work at Penn State Behrend.”

ON TEACHING:

“If we want to save the world, or at least slow the destruction of our ecosystem, we have to communicate effectively with non-scientists. Scientists tend to be introspective and many of them struggle to explain things to those outside their field. I’m really good at explaining things, so the most useful place for me to be to help fix our ecosystem is in the classroom. By teaching students to respect and appreciate our natural resources and insisting they take action to preserve it, I can have a much larger impact than I could if I worked only in the lab or in the field.”

ON ECOLOGY (AND HER SPECIALTY – AQUATIC ECOLOGY):

“I love ecology because it pulls everything together. I get to talk about all kinds of subjects from history to politics to engineering because it all influences our ecosystem. Also, I really love to play in the water.”

WHAT SHE WANTS THE WORLD TO KNOW:

“Water is our most precious natural resource, and it should never be wasted or deliberately contaminated. Drinkable water is not abundant and is, in fact, one of our most scarce natural resources. People don’t realize that yet, but they will. And it will happen in our lifetime. Every living thing needs clean water. We can’t survive without it.”

ON EDITING FRESHWATER SCIENCE:

Silver is Editor-in-Chief of Freshwater Science, a highly-rated international scientific journal that has doubled in size and tripled in submissions since Silver took over in 2005.

“It’s a ton of work,” she said. “I spend probably sixteen hours on every paper in that journal. But, it’s really satisfying work. I like making sure the science is well-written and understandable. And I’ve amassed a huge network of scientific colleagues from across the world. I have learned something from each of them.”

A DISTINGUISHING HONOR:

Silver was recently named a University distinguished professor, an honor bestowed on fewer than 120 faculty members University-wide. She was nominated by Dr. Martin Kociolek, director of the School of Science.

“I’m still not sure if I’m worthy of the title, but there are people who I have tremendous respect for who think that I am, so I guess I can trust their opinion,” she said with a laugh.

SILVER STATS:

Time at Behrend: 22 years

Favorite aquatic insect: Midges. “They are very interesting and ecologically important to the health of a lake.”

Hobby No. 2: Making small, decorative quilts. “I created one as a memorial to a famous aquatic ecologist and donated to the Society of Freshwater Science for their annual auction to benefit graduate students and it fetched a donation of $2,600!”

Hobby No. 3: Gardening. “It’s therapeutic to have your hands in the soil.”

Favorite TV show: Madam Secretary.

Favorite sweet treat: Coffee-flavored ice cream.

Dream vacation: Hiking in the Swiss Alps. “I’ve done it before, but I’d like to go back.”

Book she’d recommend everyone read: Lord of the Rings. “I inherited the book from my grandfather and didn’t think I’d like it, but I reread it every year.”

Person she admires most: Her mother. “We drive to New Jersey once a month to visit her. She is 85 and still plays the bagpipes. We play together every chance we get.”

Dr. Silver, right, and her mother, Edith

By Heather Cass

Publications & Design Coordinator, Penn State Behrend

There’s much more to Penn State Behrend’s faculty and staff members than what you see on campus. In this occasional series, we’ll take a look at some of the interesting, unconventional, and inspiring things that members of our Behrend community do in their free time.

NAME: Dr. Paul Becker

DAY JOB: Associate professor of mathematics, Penn State Behrend

HOBBY/SECOND JOB: Blueberry farmer

FARM: Blue Confusion blueberry farm, 8911 Old French Road

Three seasons of the year, Dr. Paul Becker teaches calculus and algebra and other mathematics courses at Penn State Behrend. Come summer, however, he’s in the blueberry business.

He didn’t mean to be. The job sort of came with the property that he and his wife, Sharon, bought eight years ago on Old French Road in Summit Township.

“When we bought the house they told us there was a blueberry farm in back,” he said. “But it was March and there was three feet of snow on the ground. We had no idea it was as large as it was.”

When all the snow melted, they discovered 866 blueberry bushes.

Customers begged them to keep the farm open.

“Some families have been picking here for almost 40 years,” he said. “We have one family that drives from Cleveland every summer to carry on the blueberry picking tradition.”

Becker and his wife consulted with the Penn State Extension Center who taught them how to prune, fertilize, and care for the five-acre farm, which they named Blue Confusion.

When the berries ripen in late July, the public is invited to pick their own baskets of berries. Becker, his wife, and their five-year-old son, Logan, work in a small shed out back, weighing the berries and collecting money.

Becker says selling is the easy part. The pruning, fertilizing, and mowing require more physical work.

“Pruning begins in early spring and goes until early summer,” he said. “And the mowing takes eight hours. I use the tractor between rows, but I have to use the push mower to get under each bush.”

Lest you think he might trade his faculty ID for barn boots and overalls, you should know it’s not a very lucrative business. Becker says they typically break even, but he’s not in it for the money.

“It’s a hobby, really,” he says.

HOW HE LIKES HIS BERRIES: “I like them fresh on top of a bowl of cornflakes,” Becker said. “And we make a lot of blueberry pancakes and muffins here, too.”

Becker with his son, Logan, and dog, Bo.

*** Do you have a suggestion for a candidate for a future Secret Lives of Faculty/Staff feature? Email hjc13 at psu.edu.