Grammostola porteri

[AndrewH]

Just picked up a group of 9 Grammostolas. 8 I was told were "porteri" and 1 "rosea", or red phase? Has anyone else heard of this "reclassification" with the rosea species? Anywho, here are the pics..

 

[syndicate]

Nice photos!But it looks like normal G.rosea to me.I was under the impression the red roseas are just a color variant and not a seperate species.

 

[AndrewH]

Hmmm, I've heard from a few legitimate sources about the "reclassification", with "porteri" being the brown, metallic looking Rose hairs, and the "rosea" being the red, pink, and fuschia colored animals. Any others have an opinion on it?

 

[syndicate]

Well both species are listed in the world spider catalog

mf rosea (Walckenaer, 1837)....................Bolivia, Chile, Argentina

m porteri (Mello-Leitão, 1936)....................Chile

whether or not the 2 color forms are dif species i have no clue hehe
-Chris

 

[AndrewH]

Ah very cool. Thank you I just like to have everything for my albums as scientifically correct as possible.

 

[Zoltan]

Hi Andrew,
Did the source who told you about this "reclassification" specified the means to distinguish the two species? (And I don't mean that "this has more reddish hairs and that one does not".) I've even "heard" that as we know as G. rosea "normal" is in fact G. porteri but none of the sources cited any taxonomic documentation that published this "reclassification".

 

[AndrewH]

They did not cite any specific differences between the claimed two species, other than color....which had me somewhat confused. Especially with the female in the first photo...she has both colors :wall:

 

[Zoltan]

Andrew, after reading the topic on VL, maybe you can ask Kelly (if I got it right you bought the spiders in question from him) who ID-ed the spiders you bought as G. porteri?