ID Please

[drgonzo]

Friend found in basement in western pa he's trying to say it's a mottled eastern wishbone spider...not really possible being a non native species????:?
Anyoneknow what it really is?

 

[Malhavoc's]

trapdoor of some sort I reckon.

 

[drgonzo]

well the first pic i found doing a search for wishbones came up with the exact same pic.So he didnt really send me apic of the actual spider in question..I will try to get a pic...lol

 

[drgonzo]

ok here it is

 

[zonbonzovi]

He Doc, Andrew(Cacoseraph) compiled some info on US mygs a while back. Here's the page for PA:

http://scabies.myfreeforum.org/about3746.html

Nice find!

 

[cacoseraph]

probably a purseweb of some kind. pursewebs have MASSIVE jaw and fang parts. though i have lost my spider powers... if i ever had any. time to hit the books again! (and the hills.... mmmm)

 

[cdjseahawk]

guess

my guess would be souther house spider.

 

[Chris_Skeleton]

my guess would be souther house spider.

Definitely not a southern house spider.

I would agree on some Sphodros species.

 

[Silberrücken]

Definitely not a Kukulcania hibernalis- I have 100's of these all over my house. The "Queen", as I call her, is the biggest I have EVER seen!

S.

 

[telow]

yeah looks like a purseweb to me too sphodros something or another

 

[cacoseraph]

i didn't read the range before


http://scabies.myfreeforum.org/about3746.html

at least three possibilities from that list. the two Sphodros and the Atypus

i don't remember/know how to tel them apart. you could have REALLY lucked out and got a S. rufipes... the mature males have bright red legs. they are quite stunning


i would set that up and hope to hell it's a rufipes and you get babies. unfortunately rufipes females are not easily distinguishable from other S. species females. i've seen Ken The Bug Guy has a great setup for these. i don't know what the material he uses is... but he uses a ~30oz jar half full of well compressed substrate (looks like coconut). the trick is he also makes an arch of what looks like the coconut backing for hermit crab tanks. the arch goes down into the sub but also up in a visible arch to the top of the cage.

pursewebs make a tube web that is half in the ground and half running up a tree in nature. ken's rig stimulates them to make a pretty normal purseweb which allows for feeding. the reason PW's have such large fangs is due to their feeding style. when a bug crawls over the above ground portion of the tube web the spider will CHOMP it through the tube web and then pull it inside the burrow and eat it more or less like a normal trapdoor



heck of a find man!


oh, and that is right around adult size. i think they can get a bit bigger... but that could conceivably be an adult

 

[Mal De Hyde]

Almost certainly a Sphodros

I also live in western PA and would say that is indeed almost certainly a Sphodros, as others have replied; it is definitely not an Antrodiaetus, since I know that genus very well (there are two members of it here in PA - A. unicolor and A. robustus - I have encountered both many times). No other mygalomorphs are known from PA. That narrows it down to one of three possible Sphodros - S. coylei, S. niger and S. rufipes. All in all, I surmise it is most likely S. rufipes, but I'm no expert .

 

[telow]

man i live like 10 or 15 mins from easton and i havent seen one of these
only some wolf spiders man i gotta get out more hahaha

 

[Mal De Hyde]

Don't feel too bad...I have yet to actually see a Sphodros tube, around here or anywhere else for that matter, and as for the other mygales here in PA, the two Antrodiaetus species, they are so incredibly particular regarding their micro-habitat that you'd likely never know they were here to begin with -- unless you happened to see a male crawling across your grandmother's walkway, which I did, which is how I learned of their existence here .

 

[telow]

yeah but it would be cool to find something like any of those
i think it would be anyway haha