# Phoneutria nigriventer



## Steven Gielis (Nov 3, 2006)

Small Phoneutria nigriventer. Instar 6 or 7. Bodylenght about 8 mm.


----------



## RodG (Nov 3, 2006)

Cool photos of a cool spider!!!


----------



## rex_arachne (Nov 3, 2006)

beautiful.


----------



## Crotalus (Nov 3, 2006)

Very nice! 
Is it from Vinmann?


----------



## LongDucDong (Nov 4, 2006)

Sweet! Cant wait to see this viscious beast when its all growed up. :drool:


----------



## Steven Gielis (Nov 4, 2006)

They are indeed from Vinmann.


----------



## Bastian Drolshagen (Nov 4, 2006)

what makes u so sure it´s a nigriventer? If it´s from Vinmann it can be almost everything..as far as I know he´s not able to ID any spider


----------



## Steven Gielis (Nov 4, 2006)

Normally these spiders are jounglings of the same imported animals as Stefan has. Buth Vinmann sold them. So I am rather certain.


----------



## Bastian Drolshagen (Nov 4, 2006)

hi steven, I don´t want to talk bad about TV but I got some Phoneutria sp. recently he was selling as P. fera and those turned out to be P. reidyi (Diana Silva confirmed my ID!). And he´s selling some other spiders he missidentified 100% sure. 
Additionally he´s selling a Linothele sp. (I know the exact species, but I won´t tell him, cause he doesn´t care what I´m writing to him anyway) as magdalene. There has never been a Linothele sp. described as magdalene...
All I´m saying is, that TV has a diploma in microbiology, which has nothing to do with IDing spiders or something like that and as far as I know his IDs on new imported species has not been right on a single species. So don´t believe that the name on which the spider was sold needs to be right (could be, but isn´t sure!). atm I´m only believing in the species I (or people who are trustworthy to me) identified.


----------



## Crotalus (Nov 4, 2006)

Improver said:


> hi steven, I don´t want to talk bad about TV but I got some Phoneutria sp. recently he was selling as P. fera and those turned out to be P. reidyi (Diana Silva confirmed my ID!). And he´s selling some other spiders he missidentified 100% sure.
> Additionally he´s selling a Linothele sp. (I know the exact species, but I won´t tell him, cause he doesn´t care what I´m writing to him anyway) as magdalene. There has never been a Linothele sp. described as magdalene...
> All I´m saying is, that TV has a diploma in microbiology, which has nothing to do with IDing spiders or something like that and as far as I know his IDs on new imported species has not been right on a single species. So don´t believe that the name on which the spider was sold needs to be right (could be, but isn´t sure!). atm I´m only believing in the species I (or people who are trustworthy to me) identified.


Is there a diploma for identifying spiders? Do you have that?
Of course dealers sell wrong ID spiders. Cant see the reason to be upset if Vinmann do that too on occasion. But he probably know from what area these P. is collected. If there are no other species in that area... well a no brainer.


----------



## Steven Gielis (Nov 5, 2006)

I know the reputation of Vinmann. Buth it's logic to me that not all the spiders have the right name at the seller. His job is selling   Spiders aren't that easy to ID, even for a biologist. And I wouldn't be mad if it turns out be an other Phoneutria species.

@Crotalus: If you study biology you can choose for entomology/arachnology. And then you get plenty of ID exercises. You can also learn it in arachnology associations.

@Improver: Is that the same P. reidyi as he is selling now? Do you have pictures of those animals?


----------



## Stefan2209 (Nov 5, 2006)

Steven Gielis said:


> @Improver: Is that the same P. reidyi as he is selling now? Do you have pictures of those animals?


Hi Steven,

the species is pictured here under the provisorial name of P. fera cf Oyapok, you´ll just have to do a search with this name.

@ Improver:

No one had ever stated, that those specimen had been ID éd as P. fera, this was an assumption, which was further marked through using the "cf" in the name.

This was an attempt to make this species traceable, as there are just too many "Phoneutria spec." around. 

Still better, than the chaos which is among some other species right now:

If you want to breed the Ctenidae ssp. Kenya from Chris for example and lack breeding partners, you´ll need to look out for "Palystes spec."...

Even more extrem, the story about the "tell-tale" Lycosa´s from Kenya, that are in fact Ctenidae, too, oh dear...

In some cases it´s really a much more wise move to work with such temporal titels, than to just say "i donno what it is"...

Have a nice sunday everybody.

Greetings,

Stefan

P.S. The Sao Paolo variant of P. nigriventer is imho quite easy to recognize in grown specimen. However, this isn´t true for specimen from other locations, as those can show completely different colours and even markings.
To further complicate this topic, the offsprings of this specimen can apparently show again different markings and colourations...
Take care everybody!


----------



## Bastian Drolshagen (Nov 5, 2006)

hi,
@Crotalus:


> Is there a diploma for identifying spiders? Do you have that?
> Of course dealers sell wrong ID spiders. Cant see the reason to be upset if Vinmann do that too on occasion. But he probably know from what area these P. is collected. If there are no other species in that area... well a no brainer.


No, I don´t have such  diploma. I just wrote that because people read on TVs HP, that he´s got a diploma in biology and so they think he´s able to ID spiders and believe in his IDs. I´m not especially upset on TV..also on other dealers who only try to sell (and therefore invent names or intenionally sell spiders under wrong names, as recently happend with those Pterinochilus murinus from Kenya). To me there´s nothing more wrong than selling spiders under a name that fits the most, rather than selling them under a temporal name like Phoneutria sp. ex. "Iquitos" or so one...

@Stefan:
The thing about those "Lycosa" sp. ex. "Kenya" is, what I wrote Marc some time ago, he should fire his taxonomist who´s working for him, I´ve never seen or heard of such absurd IDs as those coming from Kenya. It´s that damn story about the Thelechoris striatipes Timo and I ided as those and Sybille claims to have ided them with the "Baboon and Trapdoorspiders of Southern Africa ID Guide", which is absolute impossible. There´re some ridiculous things going on in the field of spider IDs 

I hope nobody got me wrong...I didn´t want to talk bad about TV, as Steven wrote "his job is selling", not iding, but my problem with that fact is, that he trys to sell better by using extraordinary names, which are apparently wrong.
I don´t want to argue, so why don´t we write again about that nice Phoneutria?


----------



## Crotalus (Nov 5, 2006)

Improver
but you dont know if its wrong ID or not. So why argue?


----------



## Bastian Drolshagen (Nov 5, 2006)

hi, as I wrote I didn´t want to argue, I just mentioned that it needn´t be right.


----------



## Steven Gielis (Dec 20, 2006)

Two molts further:


















The coloration of the ventral side of the abdomen looks exactly like that of the animal pictured in the link. Buth that species is named Phoneutria spec. ex. Paraguay. Anybody any clue? Does anyone has a ID key for Phoneutria species? That would be very helpfull!

http://www.bsp.labidognathe.de/upload_reimann_dirk/HP-Phoneutria spec. ex Paraquay01.JPG


----------



## Crotalus (Dec 20, 2006)

Nice spider.
Look up this article:

Simó, Miguel & Brescovit, D. Antonio,
"Revision and cladistic analysis of the Neotropical spider genus Phoneutria Perty, 1833 (Araneae, Ctenidae), with notes on related Cteninae" 
Bulletin British Arachnology Society (2001) 12 (2) 67-82


----------



## Stefan2209 (Dec 20, 2006)

Steven Gielis said:


> The coloration of the ventral side of the abdomen looks exactly like that of the animal pictured in the link. Buth that species is named Phoneutria spec. ex. Paraguay. Anybody any clue? Does anyone has a ID key for Phoneutria species? That would be very helpfull!


Hi there,

i don´t have a clue, but nevertheless want to add something.  

Look at this, moms belly..... (and some offsprings   )







Makes one think, doesn´t it?  

What do you want with the ID key? Colours and markings don´t play any role, when it comes to id´ing Phoneutria´s, as i´ve been told often enough. If you want to believe some south-american scientists, though, there´s one Phoneutria species, that´s indeed id´able by pure outer appearance...

Personally, i´ve seen enough to don´t believe this any more.

Merry X-Mas.

Greetings,

Stefan


----------



## Crotalus (Dec 20, 2006)

The paper above contains other tools to ID them then just color and markings, if you got the patience and a good microscope..

/Lelle


----------



## Stefan2209 (Dec 21, 2006)

Hi,

yeah, but there´s no apparent need for it, as they are already id éd: def P. nigriventer.

The Paraguay species is a bit more interesting in some aspects, to sum it once up:

The mother lacks the "typical" face-markings to some degrees.

The stripe at the carapace is given, but just weakly pronounced.

Abdominal backpattern is given, but very weakly pronounced, too.

The ventral side just looks plain untypically for any Phoneutria spec. i´ve seen so far.
Overall, the spider is very dark coloured.

Strange enough, gets even better:

Habitus: i´ve never seen such a strange overall build in P. nigriventer as with this specimen. If one compares body to leg sizes, this specimen is just extreme large by legspan (6 inches) and has a rather slim body in comparison. Other P. nigriventer specimen from other locations have rather heavy bodies with shorter legspans in comparison.

Not strange enough, yet:

The offsprings. They show a much brighter colouration, that resembles the "normal" colour-form of P. nigriventer.
Habitus, however, is exactly the same as in the mother. By pure growth, they apparently want to grow to similar sizes as their mother. This may be perhaps one of the strangest points: i´ve till now seen only two species of Phoneutria in this size range: P. fera and P. reidyi. And even with that species such adult sizes are rare.

Taxonomical ID is still missing, as my female is still pretty alive. So for now, it´s just educated guessing, what we´re dealing with here.
Through locality and markings of the offsprings, this should / could be P. nigriventer, but who knows for sure...

Wonder, why the youngsters show such different colours, may this be influenced through environmental conditions, e.g. temp and humidity? May it be influenced through nutrition?
Other factors, though more unlikely to my personal opinion, to be considered involve natural hybridization or even a new species or subspecies.
As known, i´m not too thrilled about this taxonomic stuff, but with this special spider i get more and more curious what it exactly is.

Time will make sure.

Greetings,

Stefan


----------



## Steven Gielis (Dec 23, 2006)

Thanks for the information Stefan!
I bought this species as Phoneuria nigriventer Sao Paulo. So I was really suprised when I saw that picture on the internet named Phoneutria spec. Paraguay. As a biology student I know that color isn't the best clue to ID a species. That's just why I am interested in the ID key of Phoneutria. I am very interested in the different colour forms.


----------



## Stefan2209 (Dec 24, 2006)

Steven Gielis said:


> Thanks for the information Stefan!
> I bought this species as Phoneuria nigriventer Sao Paulo. So I was really suprised when I saw that picture on the internet named Phoneutria spec. Paraguay. As a biology student I know that color isn't the best clue to ID a species. That's just why I am interested in the ID key of Phoneutria. I am very interested in the different colour forms.


Hi Steven,

the colours and markings story in Phoneutria is at the same time interesting and frustrating:

For now, one can observe, but at least me, i can´t explain, what i observe here. I´m well aware, that there are differences, based on locations (fact), perhaps on environmental conditions (theory) and perhaps on nutrition (very weak idea). 

But how will one explain such drastic differences as in the P. spec. Paraguay mom and her offsprings?
I´d shrug this off, if it´d be the same, as with C. getazi, where two different colours of youngsters come out of the very same batch, but here we´re dealing with a mother that has her very unique look and a big amount of offsprings that look all the same, but very different from the mother...

There´s still another example: P. reidyi.

Got hold of two specimen, raised them, had two males, one looked rather pink by colour, the other one rather purple.
Had other guys who kept this species ask me, what i´d fo to the spiders to make them show such "strange colours". Well, i didn´t understand that...

Got pics from specimen that had been taken in nature and found females that were just purple, so far, so ok.

Now i´ve seen females from the same batch, my males were from, they´re more brown-grey than anything else... Quite strange.

Some years back, i stumbled across pics of P. boliviensis females from Costa Rica, very bright coloured, like sand. Very beautiful to me.
Now i got hold of P. boliviensis from Peru and have to deal with a rather dark coloured spider that shows different shades of brown...

Might be interesting observations, but to me they are useless, as long as it´s just not possible to track down the exact reasons for this.
Even more interesting to me are the differences in the body-leg sizes, if the P. spec. Paraguay should indeed happen to be P. nigriventer why, why why does it show so extremely untypical body-leg ratio?

As stated in the other thread, many questions, no answers...

Merry X-Mas

Stefan


----------

