Is this some kind of Black Widow sub-species?

[laserdiscers]

I found this spider a couple weeks ago and I've been keeping it in a jar. I keep the lid off of the jar, because she has egg sacs and doesn't seem interested in leaving them. She had one egg sac when I found her, and she has made two more in the past couple weeks. She's about half the size of a milk dud, her web looks just like one of a Black Widow, it's just random pieces of silk criss-crossed around, and the way she catches and wraps up her food seems to be similar to black widow videos I've seen on YouTube. Whenever she makes an egg sac, she shrivels up like a raisin, loses 2/3 of her body mass.....but then a couple days later, I give her a small cricket and she re-inflates. I assume that the eggs are non-fertile since she keeps laying more and more. I have no idea though.

I'd love to find out what kind of spider she is. I found her while I was working in an abandoned house in southwest Ohio. She is black with brown lines, and the lines almost make a cube shape on her belly. I'm attaching a few pictures....it's hard to get a good pic, since she's so small. Is she some kind of relative to the black widow, or is she a more common type of house spider? I couldn't find anything about her on spider identification websites.

Can anybody give me some info?

 

[scorpanok]

it looks like parasteatoda tepidariorum to me but I'm no expert so it might be something else.

 

[Python]

+1 from me. It isn't a Latro, that's for sure. They are kept similarly though and they are very interesting to watch. They are completely harmless but, like widows, they will tackle anything that sticks in their web.

 

[laserdiscers]

Thanks for the responses, guys! After googling the parasteatoda tepidariorum, I think you're right......looks like her!

Good to know what I'm dealing with. I'm kind of new to the spider game, I just have her and two wolf spiders.

 

[Ghost56]

On another note, if they lay anywhere close to the same amount of eggs as a widow, you might want to put a lid on that jar lol. If they're fertile, you'll have hundreds of baby spiders running around.

 

[scorpanok]

they do have a lot of babies

 

[Crone Returns]

it looks like parasteatoda tepidariorum to me but I'm no expert so it might be something else.

Yeah. Got them all over my enclosed porch, and those egg sacs are a dead giveaway. They're cool spiders!