Invasive, poisonous brown widow spiders proliferating
A foreign species that is spreading. Found egg cases and a live spider in a porch swing awning today. The spider was hiding next to the egg cases - apparently this is typical, so beware. This type of spider has an orange hourglass shape on the lower surface of its abdomen. Its body has an intricate brown pattern, not black at all. The spiky egg cases are the most visible clue. You can see the egg cases much more easily than you can see the spider. Article has a good picture.
Excerpts from the article:
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Widows Peek
There’s a new venomous spider in town – it’s brown
By Scott LaFee
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. January 12, 2009
Brown is the new black.
Invasive brown widow spiders appear to have settled here permanently, with specimens commonly turning up throughout the city of San Diego, in coastal areas such as Carlsbad and as far inland as El Cajon.
“The first spiders were found here about three years ago in the downtown area,” said Jim Berrian, a field entomologist for the San Diego Natural History Museum. “They’re obviously here to stay. They’re not going away.”
So the obvious question is, what can brown do to you?
Like their more notorious black arachnid cousins, brown widows (Latrodectus geometricus) are venomous. Brown-widow venom is twice as potent as black-widow venom, though less is injected in a bite. “So the comparative effect is kind of a wash,” Berrian said.
[…]
Widow spiders are present year-round in San Diego County, but are most active in the summer and autumn. Brown widows first appeared in significant numbers in Florida in the 1930s and have since spread along the Gulf Coast. They likely arrived in San Diego aboard imported materials, Berrian said, because the tropical spiders aren’t found in New Mexico and Arizona