Latrodectus hesperus
(Western Black Widow)

Picture ID 97147

Submitted by:
gwennn
Submitted: Dec 12, 2019
Photographed: Dec 12, 2019
Spider: Latrodectus hesperus (Western Black Widow)
Location: Tucson, Arizona, United States
Spotted Indoors: Other
Found in web?: Yes
Attributes: Dorsal

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TangledWeb

Moderator

December 12, 2019 9:31 pm

This was probably an immature Western Black Widow, Latrodectus hesperus.

paging12

December 13, 2019 4:32 am

Or even a brown widow perhaps?
https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Brown-Widow

galvantula

Reply to paging12

December 13, 2019 7:14 am

Unlikely. Brown Widows usually have orange or yellow markings rather than red. They also have dark stripes on their legs. Not that I’ve ever seen a Brown Widow in person; I’ve only seen pictures.

TangledWeb

Moderator

Reply to galvantula

December 13, 2019 12:34 pm

Paging, the link you used is for a pic of the underside of a Brown Widow, which has an orange-red mark. Your spider’s photo is of the topside (dorsal) of the spider, which has orange-red and white markings in immature spiders. So, they look similar to you because you are comparing the top of one species to the bottom of another. Here’s a dorsal photo of a fairly standard Brown Widow https://spiderid.com/picture/61459/ Some have orange stripes, some don’t. I asked our Site Moderator, Itsy Bitsy, to confirm the identification one way or the other. 🙂