Biography
The daughter of an engineer and a teacher, living in Saint-Nazaire, [2] she dreamed of embracing her mother's profession but failed the competitive exam three times. [3] She enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences in Nantes where she specialized in ecology and biology of organisms, obtaining a master's degree. [4] She holds a DEA in parasitology (1982), under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Nénon and Alain Canard at the University of Rennes 1, then a doctorate with a thesis entitled The biocenosis associated with araneids, in the Armorican moors: study of insect-spider relationships in 1987 under this joint supervision. Although she did not intend to pursue arachnology, it was the discovery of these arthropods during her thesis that led her to study them subsequently. [3]
She has been a teacher-researcher at the National Museum of Natural History since 1988. [4] [5]
Administrative functions
She is a member of several scientific commissions or councils, of societies including the French Association of Arachnology (AsFrA). [6] Since 2021, she has also been president of Opie, the Office for Insects and their Environment [ fr ]. [7]
Work
Christine Rollard is particularly interested in the link between spiders and their environment and seeks as much as possible to transmit her knowledge. [8] Her scientific activities have focused on systematics, bioecology and faunistics in different geographical areas with participation in around fifteen study programs on biodiversity, in metropolitan France (Brenne, Auvergne, Normandy, Mercantour, Corsica), Overseas (Guadeloupe, Martinique and Reunion), Africa (Guinea and Comoros) and Vanuatu (Santo).
She participates in the other statutory missions of the museum: teaching, expertise as a spiderologist (customs), responsible for the conservation of the Museum's spider collection, which is the third largest in the world, [3] dissemination of knowledge to schools and the general public (like Fred Vargas for his book Quand sort la recluse [ fr ]) [2] in the form of conferences, interventions through various media, popular articles or books. [9] [10] Her passion for spiders earned her the nicknames "Madame Spider" and "Spiderwoman". [2]
She is one of the scientific curators of an exhibition entitled "Au fil des araignées", which has been traveling since 2008 in partnership with the Museum and the Espace des sciences [ fr ] de Rennes.
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