ID my widow?

[GailC]

This is the widow I got that was caught in Spokane Washington (eastern washington) Besides the red on her ventral, she also has a very faint red stripe on the top of her abdomen all the way to her head.

 

[cacoseraph]

unfortunately coloration is not a very good indicator. some ppl will tell you otherwise... but i have seen hesperus with just about every possible combo of black widow colors/colorations so i don't see how anyone can reasonably stick to color-id'ing

 

[Canth]

What other methods are there? Forgive me, I'm farely new at Latrodectus

Edit: Is there a key?

 

[Pulk]

What other methods are there? Forgive me, I'm farely new at Latrodectus

Edit: Is there a key?

location, and microscope.

 

[buthus]

This is the widow I got that was caught in Spokane Washington (eastern washington) Besides the red on her ventral, she also has a very faint red stripe on the top of her abdomen all the way to her head.

Looks/sounds like a classic hesperus to me. The thinness and type of split in the hr glass ..a faded dorsal line ...collected out west. Id put my money on hesperus.

 

[Canth]

location, and microscope.

L. hesperus, variolus, and mactans overlap a lot. So what would you look at after range?

 

[What]

To my knowledge only other method for IDing Latrodectus is looking at the genitalia.

 

[GailC]

Thanks everyone. I didn't know they were that hard to ID. It doesn't really matter what she is as I'll never breed her.

 

[KUJordan]

L. hesp fo' sho'. Don't ask me how I know it is a hesperus, it just is. I don't want to get into my technique for separating mactans and hesperus again.