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Comments & ID Thoughts
Thought black house spider but it’s very large for a house spider.. body approx 20mm and full length with legs approx 60mm. On the floor in living room under a drop sheet that was there as I was painting
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Apr 13, 2018
- Photographed: Apr 14, 2018
- Spider: Tasmanicosa
- Location: Melbourne , Australia
- Spotted Indoors: Other
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes: Dorsal
Help identify this spider
Feb 8, 2018
Feb 9, 2018
Millicent, SA, 
Hi, welcome to Spider ID. 🙂 This is a Wolf Spider (Lycosidae). Looks similar to this one in the genus Lycosa.
https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lycosa_leuckarti
Thank you! I originally thought that but doubted because it is so dark/almost black and all the wolf spiders I’ve seen have been a lighter more brown but with the flash camera you can see the markings more clearly. Plus after I posted I put it in a container to take it outside and could see the underneath abdomen is completely black. So I’m wondering if it is Tasmanicosa godeffroyi (?) which apparently has that distinction and is common in this part of Australia. http://www.findaspider.org.au/find/spiders/409.htm It ran about 1000000 miles an hour when I opened the container to let it… Read more »
Ah hah! The one I linked to for comparison (Lycosa leuckarti) was reclassified as Tasmanicosa leuckartia. I should have followed through and checked the world spider catalog to see if that was the current placement … oddly it looks like that change was made a long time ago and I’m surprised there’s a species page for it online at all. There are 14 species in the genus listed for Australia, I’ll go through them when I have more time to see if I can rule out enough of them for a species placement.