Thursday, July 16, 1987/The Battalion/Page 3
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‘Spider Bob’ says he enjoys researching insects
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By Jade Boyd
Reporter
Bob Breene considers himself an
honorary invertebrate.
Unless you spend much time at
the Entomological Research Lab or
saw a spring performance by Naked
Lunch, a local rock band Boo played
with earlier this year, you probably
haven’t seen Spider Bob. Once seen,
Spider Bob is not easily forgotten.
Bob is thin and his hairline is re
ceding, but he still keeps a good
three or four inches of curls in the
back. He’s 35 but he could pass for
34. Now that summer is here, he
usually wears flip-flops, cut-offs and
a T-shirt with a spiaer emblem on
the front. At these times Spider
Bob’s walk is most amusing.
The flip-flops turn Bob’s walk
into a shuffle. Only his legs move
and they look too thin to support
anyone shuffling as fast as Spider
Bob. When he’s skating around the
well-waxed floors of the lab, Bob is a
hard man to keep up with.
A typical day for Bob is anywhere
from 8 to 14 hours long, depending
on the weather and research needs
of the day. It might start in the field
or at the lab, but it always starts and
finishes with spiders.
Arachnology, the study of spiders,
is Bob’s field. Barring unforeseen
setbacks, he’ll have his doctorate
next year. It’s been a long time com
ing and a struggle most of the way.
At 15, Bob quit attending high
school and moved out on his own.
For five years, he held odd jobs and
played guitar for various blues and
rock ’n’ roll bands.
“The only difference that made —
not going to high school — was one
letter grade in chemistry, math and
physics,” Bob says. “I had some (sci
ence education), but not on my
own.”
After getting his GED in 1972 at
Temple University, Bob decided to
leave Philadelphia and go back to his
hometown of Columbus, Ohio. He
began attending Ohio State Univer
sity in 1973.
“Once I got into biology, I knew I
“Spider” Bob Breene
didn’t want to be a general biologist,
so I looked around for a specialty
and I just got fascinated with in
sects,” Bob says.
Why insects?
“They’re real neat,” Bob says mat-
Photo by Robert W. Rizzo
ter-of-factly. “Also, I like ecology
and I’m attracted to detail and diver
sity.”
With no financial assistance, Spi
der Bob was still a freshman two
years later. He went to visit his fa
ther in Nevada and quickly fell in
love with the state’s deserts.
“It’s the prettiest place,” Bob says.
And after a pause, “And very few
vertebrates. I like that.” He laughs.
Spider Bob’s laugh is staccato, jo
vial and, in spite of the mischievous
gleam in his eye, it is not threatening
— it’s contagious.
In 1976, Spider Bob was working
as a cowboy on a ranch in Nevada.
Later that year, he moved to Reno
and started dealing keno on the
swing shift at a casino. He attended
classes full time, and in less than a
year was exhausted and had barely
achieved sophomore status.
“That’s when I finally realized
there had to be another way to do
it,” Bob says.
Bob joined the Air Force.
“They discontinued the old GI
Bill on January 1, 1977, and I took
the oatn on December 30, 1976,”
Bob laughs. “I went in and asked
them, ‘What’s the minimum time I
can stay in and get the maximum GI
Bill?’ and they said, ‘18 months.’ So I
stayed in 18 months and one day —
just to make sure.”
In the spring of 1979, Spider Bob
enrolled at Texas A&M.
But after getting a bachelor’s de
gree in entomology, he began to
worry that no one would hire him
just to study spiders, so he got a mas
ter’s degree in agriculture and spent
a year at the University of Tennes
see.
Spider Bob returned to College
Station in April 1985 and started on
his doctorate, working for Dr. Win
field Sterling, an A&M entomolog
ist, as a research assistant.
“I knew Sterling was a spider syrm
pathizer,” Bob says, laughing.
Currently, Bob is researching the
last major uneradicated cotton pest
— the cotton flea hopper. He’s try
ing to prove that the natural preda
tors in the cotton field — spiders —
can take care of the flea hoppers. If
this is true, spraying with pesticides
is costing farmers money.
For the last year Spider Bob has
been raising thousanas of flea hop
pers. He then makes them ‘hot,’ or
radioactive, and releases them in his
cotton test field. A day after the re
lease Bob goes back to the field and
vacuums the rows on which the flea
hoppers were released.
Back at the lab, he sifts through
the collected material. The spiders,
some of which are only a few millim
eters long, must be sorted, identified
and checked for radiation levels.
The data collected so far looks
promising. The spiders are eating
quite a few ‘hot’ flea hoppers.
Spider Bob admits he takes a
great deal of criticism about his cho
sen field.
“A lot of people have almost an in
nate fear of them,” he says. “It turns
out they are quite beneficial in a lot
of areas.”
Bob is a firm believer that pure
science can be just as beneficial as
applied science.
“For instance, my black widow
deal,” Bob says. “I found out they
(males) can mate over and over and
over again, and more or less put the
nail in the coffin about that myth. I
found the male could easily escape,
and that the great exception to the
rule was that the males got eaten and
not the other way around.
“That’s when I realized the only
reason the name ‘black widow’ got
started was because stupid research
ers in the past had put a male in
where he couldn’t escape. In the
wild there’s very little chance of that.
He’s got too many defenses.
“That’s pure science. It’s not
going to benefit anybody, but I think
it’s every bit as important as applied
science.
“Science for science’s sake is
enough. It doesn’t need to be ap
plied which, unfortunately, is the
way everything is going these days.
They want you to turn a buck before
you even start your project.”
So what’s next for Spider Bob?
“I always thought the best thing a
person could be was an arachnolog-
ist, but I’ve made that now,” he says.
“So there’s only one other goal and
that’s to be the best arachnologist of
all time — past, present or future —
and I’m guaranteed to die trying.”
Fish stinging
swimmers
in Galveston
GALVESTON (AP) — Lifeguards
are warning swimmers off Galveston
Island to beware of barb-stinging
cownose rays, which have stung 25
people since the Fourth of July
weekend.
“So far we haven’t had any serious
injuries, mostly puncture wounds,”
said Lt. Vic Maceo, director of the
Galveston County Beach Patrol.
“But I’ve never seen anything like
this.”
The cownose rays are a flat,
round filter fish that resemble small
stingrays. They tend to be scared off
by groups of people and tend to re
treat from snallow areas by late
morning, he said.
Maceo said that beginning
Wednesday, lifeguards were making
morning addresses on beach public
address systems, warning beach-
goers of the hazards and urging
them to be on the lookout for the
fish, which measure about two feet
in diameter.
Unlike stingrays, the cownose ray,
so-called because of its cow-like nose,
does not lie unseen beneath the sand
and has a harder time stinging its
victim, Maceo said.
“They also swim in groups and
can be seen easily,” Maceo said.
“They usually hang in troughs in a
few inches of water.”
Roy Drinnen, fish curator at Sea-
Arama Marineworld said anyone
stung should see a doctor.
“They don’t carry any poison, but
they are dirty,” Drinnen said.
Correction
The byline on a story pub
lished in Wednesday’s issue of
The Battalion about Joan Maffei,
a local painter, was mistakenly
not included. Susan Akin, a re
porter for The Battalion, wrote
the story.
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