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Comments & ID Thoughts
This tiny (about 1mm) space-filling web weaver, one of three in separate webs in a succulent that was outside for the summer and has come inside in central Connecticut. It has chevron/stripes on dorsal abdomen, bands on legs. Would love some help with ID.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Dec 9, 2020
- Photographed: Dec 6, 2020
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Middletown, Connecticut, United States
- Spotted Indoors: Other
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes:
I think it is Parasteatoda tepidariorum. The common name, Common House Spider, isn’t really commonly used. I live in New England also, I have a lot of these spiders living on the exterior of my house. They sometimes make mosaic canopies out of silk and found debris over their webs. I saw one swiftly kill an invasive stinkbug, which endeared them to me.
Thank you for commenting! I wondered about P. tepidariorum and have seen these on the exterior of my house, too. These 3 are 1mm or so, much smaller than the ones I’ve seen outside. I tried to post a second picture that shows the chevron/stripes on the dorsal abdomen. I’m going to have a look under the microscope and try to take and post another photo that way.
I think it could be a different species of Parasteatoda. I can see the marking in your photo. Some of my photos have females with that mark and males without it. I tried to link one post, not sure if it will work. Our experienced moderator filed them as Parasteatoda spp. In other words, there are multiple possible species in the genus and she wasn’t sure from a photo. One of my future possible projects is to determine which Parasteatoda and Steatoda are in the area using a dissection microscope. I live in the neighborhood of a university that has… Read more »
https://spiderid.com/picture/97488/
Thank you for the link. So interesting. I think at least one of these tiny spiders doesn’t have the markings. In case you haven’t seen the new picture I posted through the dissecting scope of one with the marking, here’s a link. https://spiderid.com/picture/132890/
Nice ventral photo! I can’t quite place it from memory though I’ve seen it before, maybe in my own photos. I’ll see what I can find.