Published Feb. 26, 2021Updated Feb. 28, 2021
Late last month, Anne Danielson-Francois, an associate biology professor at the University of Michigan, received an unusual package. She had instructed the sender to make sure the contents spiders were cushioned because she did not want their legs to break off.
When Dr. Danielson-Francois opened the little brown box, there they were a male spider stuck on a glue trap, two female spiders suspended in an alcohol solution, and a few juvenile spiders.
Dr. Danielson-Francois, who works at the university’s Dearborn campus, had been enlisted by university officials as a sort of spider-buster. Last month, pest management teams found that unfamiliar spiders had moved into the basement of the Shapiro Undergraduate Library on the Ann Arbor campus, a space fewer people were visiting because of the coronavirus pandemic, the university said.