Comments & ID Thoughts
I know it's either a Latrodectus Variolus (northern black widow,male),or a Latrodectus Mactans (southern black widow, male). Caught it crawling across my carpet in my family room.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Oct 18, 2018
- Photographed: Oct 18, 2018
- Spider: Latrodectus mactans (Southern Black Widow)
- Sex:Male,
- Maturity:Adult
- Location: Mcloud, Oklahoma, United States
- Spotted Indoors: Other
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes: Dorsal
Hi, see above image for ID. 🙂
How can you tell the difference between northern and southern?
I want to say the northern has the different colored legs? I’m not convinced my picture above is correctly labeled. All other northern black widows (male) pictures I’ve seen look like that above, whereas the southern ones are all black. But maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places.
It looks different in part because it’s male. I placed this as mactans because of the red band on the anterior portion of the abdomen. It presents differently on L. variolus, see how it is thinner and white on this one: https://bugguide.net/node/view/104699/bgimage