Note: I no longer monitor iNaturalist to assist with IDs.

I'm spider taxonomist and nature educator who goes by Spider Joe. I teach kids about spiders in Austin, Texas. I'm a champion for the everyday spiders we see, like jumping spiders, crab spiders, and orbweavers. I'm also a research associate at UT Austin, where I study crab spiders (thomisidae), particularly Mecaphesa. I'm also a software architect inventing technologies that help bridge the mismatch between human and computer representations of data.

Co-author of the key to the genera of Thomisidae north of Mexico (Spiders of North American: An Identification Manual, 2nd edition).