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Agelenid Spider by Amagire

Agelenid Spider

Amagire

These cuties are commonly mistaken for wolf spiders, which they closely resemble -- their eye arrangement is the giveaway. Usually you find them on their sheeted or funneled webs, hanging out in shrubbery or grass; hence their common names, "grass spider" and "funnel weaver"/"funnel-web spider"*. This one was my pet for several months in 2009.

*not that kind of funnel-web spider

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866
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7
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3
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General
Category:
Visual / Photography

Comments

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    Aw, so fluffy!

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    I love your spider photos. As reference and as education (I learn a bunch from your blurb).

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    I recently spent several hours digging through the photos of black widows trying to figure out their eyes arrangement. Went through about a thousand, and a few dozen high res close-ups... But only found that they have 4 small eyes in a row and two big ones up front, unclear whether above or below those 4. And I couldn't find where the remaining two are.

    I found this drawing of eye arrangement by family -- http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.10/surveying-the-oft-snubbed-and-very-cool-spider-with-citizen-scientists -- but... Black widows are listed as Theridiidae.

    ... Oh, and... I have an acute arachnophobia...

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      You may find this article on Bugguide helpful. (Theridiidae specifically are here on the page). Lots of great photos on that site; it's one of my go-to spider ID tools.

      Like most spiders, black widows have eight eyes, arranged in two rows of four. I actually find widow eye arrangement kind of endearing (unsurprising, since I've kept them as pets for years). Their tendency to lurk almost out of sight and the way their large posterior median eyes catch the light and glitter always makes them look adorably worried to me.

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    Thanks. That's a really good one. The schematics make it easier to check -- in both ways.
    Guess I messed up with their arrangement then, I assumed it to be more like 2 large anterior, 4 small posterior and 2 lateral.
    Do the species you kept have also 2 small posterior lateral eyes? Because the photo there shows posterior eyes almost uniform in size unlike anterior.

    The species I was looking at is different, though, and I couldn't find them specifically on that page.

    Would you mind if I toss you the links to the photos I have found which I was trying to work off?

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      Haha, I guess I used "large" there to indicate "in relation to the spider's face", not "in relation to the rest of the spider's eyes". My apologies for being unclear. You're right, widow spider eyes are pretty uniform in size -- the placement of the PMEs is what makes them noticeable. They also tend to catch camera flash, and finding the shiny black eyes on a shiny black spider is not un-difficult if you don't already know where they are!

      I have two species currently: a false black widow (Steatoda grossa) and a Western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus). The eye arrangement is very similar. Spider eye arrangement tends not to vary much within species family groups, which is why it's such a useful identification tool; from my experience, the Bugguide illustrations are accurate. But I'd be happy to look at your photos. I may also have some pix that show the eyes on my pets, if you'd like those.

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    I'll note you, thanks.