Dave's little beasties comments about captive bred G. Pulchra

[Andrew Clayton]

It's greed with the excuse used as supply and demand here in the U.S.

As long as people keep buying seller's will keep charging high amounts.

It's not the love of arachnoculture it's the green.

If I ever decide to do a breeding project I'm giving slings away free for the betterment of arachnoculture and to share with others.

Yeah I would do the same, any time I have a MM I just give him away or if I find out early enough it's male I sell it cheap.

 

[Glorfindel]

be calm, be gentile, and love your spider

 

[Spifdar]

Admittedly slightly off-topic but out of interest, is there anyone here who's definitively kept both quirogai & pulchra and can compare their temperaments? I'm aware spiders (like any animal) are individual and there'll be variation, but I'm curious nonetheless!

 

[OldFlash]

The recent redescription of Grammostola pulchra lists several differences between it and G. quirogai. The only difference in the embolus is that G. pulchra has a developed apical keel while G. quirogai does not. Other differences include: presence of stiff erect setae at the top of the palpal tarsi (cymbium) in G. pulchra, missing in G. quirogai; and presence of macro setae at the top of the smaller branch of the tibial apophyses, not present in G. quirogai. There are other differences, but those would be the easiest to view with appropriate magnification.

Also, the redescription of G. pulchra has high quality photos of both an adult male and female that when compared to the hobby G. pulchra makes it obvious what we have in the hobby is not G. pulchra. Yet, no one has performed any kind of analysis of the hobby G. pulchra to determine if it is G. quirogai or something else entirely. G. quirogai appeared in the hobby only because sellers decided to change the name of their existing stock from G. pulchra to G. quirogai, but not everyone does this leading to the impression that there could be two big black species of Grammostola being traded.

After reading the whole thread, I couldn’t resist jumping in: from what I’ve heard, talking to some Brazilian friends in the know, the genus is up for a revision, and it’s apparently in for some big changes. One of those changes has to do with Grammostola 'pulchra.' Chances are, the species we know as pulchra in the hobby was never the 'original' pulchra, so to speak. The real G. pulchra is supposedly only found in a small area of southern Brazil. Word is, that species barely ever got exported out of the country. Most of what spread through the hobby is believed to have come from Uruguay and is now described as G. quirogai (which also occurs in Brazil). On top of those two, there’s another black tarantula in Argentina that’s expected to pop up in the revision—though I’m not sure what they’ll call it.

Since there’s almost no tarantula trade in Brazil, the little we know is that this 'original' pulchra is a bit smaller than the others, has metallic bristles scattered all over and takes forever to grow. As far as I know, there aren’t any reports of successful breeding over there.

It’ll be interesting to see how the hobby sorts itself out after a molecular revision of the genus.

 

[TheraMygale]

We have a dealer in canada who sells both, the pulchra and quirogai. I am very curious to know how they have “identified” them.

its to far for me to buy from anyways, and i only trust my local dealer. Im any case, i would still by a pulchra from my dealer.

@OldFlash even if little was exported, much was blackmarket. And there still could be some. i am only saying that because, its possible there mght be some in the husbandry. But we would need to get down to anatomy and dna to confirm what we have.

 

[OldFlash]

And there still could be some. i am only saying that because, its possible there mght be some in the husbandry.

Some for sure, no doubt about it.

@OldFlash even if little was exported, much was blackmarket.

To be honest, when I said " that species barely ever got exported out of the country", I didn't mean "exported legally" at all,