Colin has loved nature ever since he was a kid. At the age of 16, he fell in love with spiders after reading Dickson Wong’s A Guide to the Spiders in Hong Kong. Seeing not a lot of information on spiders in Hong Kong, Colin learnt about spiders by relying on the Swiss World Spider Catalog and his own field observations.

Over summer holidays in Form 5, he worked as an assistant at the School of Biological Sciences of The University of Hong Kong, assisting Dr. Benoit Guénard, professor in insect ecology, for his research on ants. In order to advance his knowledge in identifying spiders, he began browsing forums on HKWildlife.net and iNaturalist to address questions from other users on spider species, completing over 20,000 species identifications on iNaturalist*. Browsing iNaturalist is like second nature, says Colin: "Whenever I have free time, my fingers just type in the words that get me to the website!" He is currently studying ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, Canada, and hopes to participate in ecological research in universities or museums in the future.
*iNaturalist – An international online platform to exchange ecological data, users can upload their own records of an organism under “Observations”. These records will be available on the database for research and public use after two experts verify the species identity.