Wolf Spider (Lycosidae), Kempner, TX: 120508

The spider portrayed in this and on the following pages was acquired from Marvin W., in Kempner, TX on 120508. Marvin, his wife, and their children are rookie Texans who are busily getting familiar with the flora and fauna of their part of Central Texas. I'm a grateful beneficiary of their abiding interest in nature (see the trapdoor spider Marvin collected on 111208). As the photo at right shows (and further examination confirms), this spider is a female with simple distal palps and diaxial--i.e., opposite and thus scissor-like--fangs that project down, below the face, rather than outward, as in the Mygalmorphae. That, with several other anatomical markers, places it in the infraorder Araneomorphae. As the pages that follow show, this spider is ecribellate, has eight eyes such that the Posterior Eye Row is strongly recurved, with the Posterior Lateral Eye so far back from the Posterior Medial Eye that they seem to comprise two rows; an epigynum, and tarsi with scattered trichobothria. These features establish this as a wolf spider--in the Lycosidae family--a large taxonomical grouping of spiders that, in North America, is represented by 16 genera and 238 species (Ubick et al, [2005], p. 164).  NEXT PAGE ----PAGE Menu:  1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 *  

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