Comments & ID Thoughts
The spider was discovered in the laundry room near the garage. I thought at first it may have been a black/brown widow but on closer examination, not sure. Need additional opinions.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Feb 23, 2019
- Photographed: Feb 23, 2019
- Spider: Steatoda grossa (False Black Widow)
- Location: Hampton, Virginia, United States
- Spotted Indoors: Other
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes: Dorsal
Hi, this is a False Black Widow, Steatoda grossa.
Isn’t it just a false widow instead of a false black widow
As a specific species the consensus is to call this one a False Black Widow. The similar spiders in family Theridiidae that are dark-colored, as a group, can be referred to as false widows. I’ve been using it wrong in my own IDs, I’ll be more specific in the future. Common names can be messy things. We keep them, in part, because many binomial scientific names are being changed rapidly with the availability of genomic testing changing the way organisms are classified. They used to be organized by behavior and body morphology instead of genetic ties.