Identifying Slings

Spaceblues

Arachnopeon
Joined
Nov 30, 2014
Messages
43
It was a warm day here today after a long cold spell so there were a lot of spiders out and about on my porch. I grabbed two tiny little brownish slings and have them in vials just to keep for a day and show my son. I assume that they're wolf spiders because we have zillions in our yard each year.

However, that got me to looking around to see if I could positively ID them and I really can't. My field guides are of adults, and I couldn't seem to find anything on the net to identify anything other than adult spiders.

At this small of a stage I guess there are a ton of sp that just look like little brown spiders... so I guess it would be hard to show in a field guide what to look for. Do you know of any resources that would help us as we collect on our rookie season?


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jecraque

Arachnobaron
Joined
Oct 10, 2012
Messages
342
Eye pattern and overall body shape are the two things I look at first. I don't know of any field guides specific to TX off the top of my head, but I use BugGuide pretty religiously. If you have a login and password, you can search by state, which is super helpful. Here's an example that may include your little brown spiders, but you can play around with the search parameters too.

If you have photos, one of us can probably ID them--maybe not to species, but at least to family--and give a few pointers as far as what features we're looking at to make the ID.
 

Spaceblues

Arachnopeon
Joined
Nov 30, 2014
Messages
43
Oh cool - I didn't know about that site. Thanks so much! I unfortunately don't have pics and I turned them loose already. They were too small to photograph with my phone and I don't have anything small enough for them to eat.


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