Wanda Wesołowska


Wanda Wesołowska is a Polish zoologist known for her work with arachnids. Her research focuses on the taxonomy, biology and zoogeography of jumping spiders.

Career

Wesołowska started studying biology at the Faculty of Biology and Earth Sciences in Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 1968. Her original interest was ornithology. She achieved her MSc in Biology for her work Obserwacje ptaków wodno-błotnych zbiornika zaporowego na Wiśle pod Włocławkiem w okresie wędrówek which was published in Acta zooogica Cracoviensia in 1973.
After graduating, she took a role at what is now the University of Natural Sciences and Humanities in Siedlce where she developed her lifelong interest in the jumping spider family. She stayed at Siedlce until moving to the University of Wroclaw in 1978 to start her doctoral study. She achieved a doctorate in natural sciences in 1984 and since then has been successively an Assistant, Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the University. She was awarded Habilitation on the basis of her work A Revision of the Spider Genus Menemerus in Africa , published in the Genus, and in 2009 was made a Professor of the institution. During her career, much of her work has involved work in Africa, including the taxonomy of Festucula, Harmochirus, Maltecora, Massagris and Menemerus, and the biodiversity of spider ecology.
She is a member of the African Arachnological Society, International Society of Arachnology, Polskie Towarzystwo Taksonomiczne and Polskie Towarzystwo Zoologiczne.

Taxa named in Wesołowska's honour

As of April 2017, the World Spider Catalog lists the following taxa described by Wesołowska: