Lurking in a garage

[Eric]

Doesn't look that gravid to me....Can't tell you what happened to her legs. Maybe a prey animal did that?

Eric

[iainspowart]

Thank you, I'll be quite glad if there aren't hundreds more of these on the way! We've got enough of these as it is

[Phil]

This is the same female T. duellica from the second image that I posted. Now that she has turned around I can see that she only has six legs - Legs I & II on the right side are gone. Any ideas as to how this might have happened?

It makes me wonder about the 'molted' legs that are to the right in the earlier photo (and just visible at the right of this one). I can't tell how many legs she had in the earlier photo as she's too obscured by the web and the flash creates too many shadows.

Is it also possible that she might be pregnant? Or are they all that large in the abdomen? I'm not sure I want hundreds of these in my garage!

Iain

This image tells me so much more! My picture above is an example of a very gravid female.

So a couple things I see that stand out to me.
Leg span. That looks very long legged to me. So much so that it is noticeable in this image. It almost looks like a male T. duellica with a fat abdomen.
Prosoma (Cephalothorax). That is a very FLAT looking prosoma, which IIRC is what distinctly separates T. atrica from the rest of the pack. If you compare the semi-lateral profile of my image with this image, it is even more clear that your spider there has a flatter prosoma. (to me atleast)

I think in light of that image, I would make a very - unconfident guess - that this spider, in this image is T. atrica.

I'm again not an expert tho, and I could be wrong on everything I said above

[Phil]

About not wanting them in your home... YES you do lol! As many as you can get! This is hands down the nicest house spider genus. VERY docile, so much so that I scoop them up with no fear of a bite. Gentle giants they are. They will only have a population that can be supported by food, so the more you have, the less other pests. You wont stop them from breeding. They are very effeicent at it, and I have never seen a female eat a male in all my years of breeding them in captivity, which means males can wander around and breed with lots of females.

The one in your image could be gravid, but doesn't look it. I don't see a sac in the web either.

@Eric I find wild Agelenids (all Tegens/Agelenopsis spp. etc.) in my garage and home with missing legs all the time. Very common for this genus to detach a leg when in trouble. The culprit (on my property atleast) is Cobweb spiders. Most notably Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Males wandering get caught all the time by their webs. Sometimes they purge limbs and get away to fight another day, other times the die. I have witnessed this on a few occasions. I have also found very dominant P. tepidariorums with countless Agelenid corpses.

That is just my property tho, but I'd bet it's true in other regions.

They are this docile.


Biggest gal I've measured 2.5 inch DLS.


Caught a hobo


Caught a Giant house spider


I wish I had the rest on my laptop. The one in the image with a hobo had THIRTEEN Agelends at the bottom of her web that I could count. She was the definition of a fearless beast.

[Phil]

Oh and here is a good image that shows the flatness of Atrica prosoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Te...ora.vicina.jpg

But I dunno now because I see photos of females without the flat prosoma. Hopefully Mandy will check in on this thread and tell us more.

[iainspowart]

Unfortunately she is now an ex-spider. I came home tonight and found her being eaten (I assume) by a smallish black spider.

I'll post photos (and maybe some video if it turns out) in the morning and see if anyone can ID the culprit. It's about 10mm body length with a silky black/silver abdomen. There were two of them - one on the body of the tegenaria and the other about an inch away.

[iainspowart]

Just posted video of the crime scene in a new thread. I think they might be Scotophaeus blackwalli (family Gnaphosidae)

[Mandy]

I don't know for sure what the spider in the 1st image is... either a Malthonica or a Tegenaria domestica I would think. I'd need to spend a few years in Scotland studying/collecting them to be able to tell for sure.

2nd image (with the two spiders of different sizes) could be any of the look-alikes: Tegenaria gigantea, T. atrica, T. saeva, etc. You simply *cannot* tell without microscope exams in Scotland and other places where they are known to interbreed and create hybrids.

Is it also possible that she might be pregnant? Or are they all that large in the abdomen?

She looks like an adult and therefore might have already mated and be storing sperm, but right now she doesn't appear to be growing any eggs. Her abdomen size is pretty average for a non-pregnant specimen.

Oh and here is a good image that shows the flatness of Atrica prosoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Te...ora.vicina.jpg

That photo is unfortunately another perfect example of why I really, really do not condone the use of Wikipedia for spiders, especially if spiders are still a fairly new topic for a person and they're trying to learn things. That image is a really lovely one but of something so FAR off from a Tegenaria that I just... ugh.... and I don't know where the "flat prosoma" rule in T. atrica rule comes from, as I haven't heard it before (doesn't mean there's not some truth to it though). ... But the genitalia under a microscope is the only way to identify gigantea/saeva/atrica.

Oh, that Wiki image is of an adult male "tube web spider" in the family Segestriidae. It's even a haplogyne spider (completely different from Tegenaria, which are entelegyne) and the bulbs of the palps are totally visible and unmistakable. So many other things are off, too, like the banded legs, the position of the spinnerets, the shape of the carapace, the spines and hairs, the leg orientation (first 3 legs pointing forward, last pair back) etc. I don't mean to sound so grumpy or whatever, I just get so annoyed when people that don't know the subject upload images like that and cause a whole train wreck of confusion for the rest of the world that's trying learn about spiders, lol... I know they mean well; it's just something I need to stop getting worked up about, *sigh* LOL The funny part is that the image was moved there from Tegenaria agrestis, which is just as wrong... so it makes me laugh to think about the person who must have "corrected" them, ahaha! "Um, that's not a Tegenaria agrestis, it's a Tegenaria atrica." (Meanwhile both of those are so very wrong.)

Sorry for the rant! That caught me off-guard, wasn't expecting to rant about wikipedia today (though it does happen often!) :-)