Location helps to distinguish between Latrodectus spp. I don’t think it’s hasselti, but to be fair their toxicity levels are pretty similar so it doesn’t make much of a difference if that’s what you’re concerned about.
These are all L. hesperus juvenile females. All North American black widow species have red markings besides an hourglass at some point in their life. The distinguishing factor here is range. You will probably never see an exotic widow species outside of its range unless it was transported. The habitat that you are seeing them in is not one where an exotic species would likely appear
I hope that's true.
It is common for juvenile black widows (of all species) to have red markings on their backs. Most native species outgrow these markings, although red spots often remain on Latrodectus variolus (the northern black widow).
This is definitely not a redback. It happens to have red on its back, but it's certainly not in the same family as redbacks. I'm nowhere near an expert on spiders in your area, but it appears to be a species in the Castianeira genus - these are harmless ground spiders. you can see a similar one here: https://www.whatsthatbug.com/2015/10/06/ground-spider-5/
That’s not a thing. Many of the native North American widow species have red markings on their dorsal side. I’ll let someone more versed in the US Latrodectus species give you an ID, but I am certain it will turn out to be a very normal local species.
OK thank you for the information. I’m definitely not an expert.
hey, me neither
thankfully we do have experts here and they’re generous with their knowledge!There are several different species in North America that can have a variety of red or orange markings at different times in their lives - juveniles can look quite different from adults, for instance, and even within a given species there can be a range of different markings. I’ve seen a bunch of North American black widows that have similar markings to what’s in your photos, but I’m not familiar enough with them to hazard an ID.
L. variolus can likely be ruled out, as they typically have a broken hourglass.
In that region it’s most likely to be the northern widow, Latrodectus variolus.
Found in Kentucky? This could be either L. mactans (the southern black widow), or L. variolus (the northern black widow). Both are native to that state, and I’m not good enough to tell the difference.
Yep. Google Lens told me Red Back and here I am lol
Many Latrodectus species’ dorsal markings are highly variable, which makes them a poor candidate for identification by artificial intelligence. For some specimens, even experts would need to examine microscopic details to definitively discern between species. AI image interpretation is pretty good these days, but it’s very far from perfect, and it’s strongly limited by past input and by photo quality, angle, zoom level, lighting, etc. I like iNaturalist because it takes your location into account (which is a huge deal for arthropod identification), and because actual experts will provide corrections to identifications, often within days of uploading an image. Again, their AI is imperfect, but the experts on the platform make it so much better.
