Red Spider with Large Brown Shiny Abdomen
January 13, 2010
Found in the garage this morning next to a box that had been in storage for a long time and had been taken out.
It seems “shy” – it prefers to stay motionless with its legs drawn tightly to the body. I wasn’t even sure it was a spider at first since the abdomen resembles some kind of seed.
To take the photo and get it to extend its legs I had to shake the container a bit.
MAK
Malibu, CA
Hi MAK,
Your spider is Dysdera crocata, and BugGuide calls it by three different common names that refer to variations on the common name of its prey. The names on BugGuide are Woodlouse Hunter, Sow Bug Hunter and Pill Bug Hunter, though Charles Hogue, in his wonderful book Insects of the Los Angeles Basin, refers to it by the even more accurate name Sow Bug Killer. The Biosecurity of New Zealand website calls this species a Slater Spider because Slater is a common name for the prey in New Zealand and Australia. According to that site: “Slater spiders originate in Europe but are now common throughout much of the world. They may be found throughout New Zealand and are common in suburban gardens.“
naturally like your website but you have to test the spelling on quite a few of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I in finding it very troublesome to inform the reality on the other hand I’ll certainly come back again.
We do not correct the spelling nor grammatical errors in the letters we post from our readership, however we do strive for accuracy with our responses, but we are not perfect. We do not have an editor to check our accuracy prior to posting.
Haven’t tried the Clark zapper yet, right now it’s just an idea.
I was looking at the conventional bug zapper in Home Depot, and noticed it has about 3/8″ spaces between the bars, this won’t work unless I can find a way to make it small enough so a mite can’t slip through it, or devise something that will fry them if they land, or fall, on it?