Van Cortland Park New York City, is full of spiders, which Dr. Ovtsharenko collects using a sweeping net.

Though Vlad has studied all groups of spiders, his main interest lies specifically in the taxonomy of ground spiders (Gnaphosidae), of which there are about 120 genera and 3,000 species worldwide. Vlad chose to specialize in ground spiders because the group was not well studied. The fact that practically nothing was known or written about ground spiders presented a challenge that Vlad could not resist.

Vlad's current research project is on the study of the biodiversity of Australasian ground spiders. Vlad is working with two colleagues, Norman Platnick and Kefyn Catley, to inventory the ground spiders of Australia. These spiders live in soil, in leaf litter, or under the bark of trees, and prefer a desert or semi-desert habitat, but are found throughout Australia. Because of Australia's geographical isolation, its fauna, including its mammals and invertebrates, are very different from fauna elsewhere in the world. The majority of these spiders are endemic to Australia -- they live nowhere else in the world. Some groups of Australian Gnaphosidae have completely different morphological structures than any other known, described ground spiders. The project is exciting, not only because Vlad and his colleagues find spiders that are completely different from any other known species, but also because hundreds of the species they have found have never been studied by scientists before. It is entirely possible that no other human being has even seen many of these species.