Hello Bugman!
Hi, just sending this again, in case it got lost in the metamorphosis shuffle! My big question about this brown recluse is the fact it is two colors, i.e., brown thorax, white abdomen. Any insights as to why that is? Have a great day!
Kate
Originally sent: (02/01/2008) Hello Bugman! I live in Arkansas and I know our house is infested with brown recluses. I have just never seen one with a whitish abdomen before. In all respects it sure looks like a brown recluse to me. Could this be a female about to lay eggs? The spider is about half an inch. I found it crawling in a box of clothes. If this is a brown recluse, you might want to post the photo so people know the spider’s color can vary like this. I thought they were not active in winter? This is very scary as I have had two bites, the last one this summer and it was a systemic, severe reaction. Thanks,
Kate
Hi Kate,
Your example of a Brown Recluse, Loxosceles reclusa, is consistant with images posted to BugGuide. This species a uniformly colored abdomen, but sometimes is is light and other times darker. The violin shaped marking on on the cephalothorax is distinctive, giving this spider the other common name of Violin Spider.
Hi! I live in Kansas where there is a ton of brown recluses. I have learned a lot about them and catch them all the time with drinking glasses. They cannot crawl up glass while most spiders can. I use that as my number one way to identify them. Also they only have six eyes. So I catch them, put a board under the glass and then carefully flip it over, if they can’t crawl up the glass, they get flushed down the toliet straight to the sewer followed by another flush for good measure. I make sure to flush before throwing them in there so they dont have a chance to crawl out first before being sucked down the drain which happened one time.
This picture is a female. I have caught only a few females since they don’t travel far from their nest which is in hidden dark corners while the males travel around at night to find the females to mate.
Anyways, I could go on and on about them but what is interesting is that I have had a female trapped in a upside down small glass for weeks at a time because I was not brave enough to flip the glass and afraid she would get away since they are very fast in warm climates. I thought I could starve her out but later I read that it can take six months. Anyways, long story too late to be short, her abdomen color would vary at times from this white color to a darker color. I have not found the reason why. If anyone knows, please let me know! It is very interesting.