After an unproductive search for widows in an outdoor storage closet, I found a little bitty spiderling crawling up my sleeve. I don't know a whole lot about widows as of yet, but this thing looks like a tiny widow for sure. I live in the St. Louis, MO area and have never personally seen any other spiders with that telltale abdomen shape that a widow has. This guy's tiny and I can't spot any red markings on the abdomen, but I just wanted some input. I've done some searches for images of Latrodectus babies but can't find any. His legspan is less than 1/8", he's black, and has the bulbous opisthosoma that you would expect to find in a Latro. I don't have a camera handy but will try to get some shots up soon. Any ideas?
Widow sling?
- Thread starter cabey0201
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2007
- Messages
- 4,212
well, widow slings body color does not look altogether similar to an adult. at the size you said, the spider should have mostly white markings, red streaks, and a smidge of black. and of course, no matter how big, there is the hourglass underneath. that is what a black widow sling looks look.
http://cals.arizona.edu/urbanipm/spiders/blackwidows.html
look at the diagram right below the female. shows the pattern on juvies.
http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=IS0323
and this describes spiderling color.