Question
Dear Jack:

Thank you for being available to answer my question. This morning I saw a spider, (the size of Texas I might add:), crawl across my dining room floor. It was not like any wolf spider I have seen in the past and I doubt it was in that family. It's body appeared more like that of a black widow. It was dark brown, fuzzy, and had two separate orange stripes running down its' back. It's legs were slender & fuzzy and it' body was fuzzy and shaped, as I stated, similar to that of black widow only maybe a wee bit wider at the section where the head meets the body. I have been unsuccessful in finding any pictures that resemble what I killed this morning. (And I'm sorry for killing, but I had to do it! My skin is still crawling! He did not look friendly!)

I did read a post by a man in California questioning and describing the same spider on another site. Unfortunately the response to his question was not posted.

I am located in SW Florida if that helps. As he stated, in his 50 years he had never seen one and I, in my nearly 50 years have never seen one like it either.

Thank you for devoting a bit of your time to my inquiring mind.

Sincerely,
Lisa

Answer
Lisa,

I don't think I can be much help, except perhaps to point you in the right direction. There are lots of large spiders in SW Florida and other tropical and semi-tropical regions. The good news is there are only a couple of venomous spiders in the US and none of them are very large.

The black widow and her cousins are the most venomous species in the US. The brown recluse (south-central US) is another species that has a reputation of a venomous bite. And, there are a couple of other species that are less commonly encountered and have less venomous bites. If you are curious take a look at this page http://www.livingwithbugs.com/brown_recluse_spiders.html for information about the brown recluse spider and this page http://www.livingwithbugs.com/spider_id.html for some general information about spiders.

As to your question. You might want to contact the folks in the entomology department at U. of Florida http://entnem.ufl.edu/ and talk with their extension specialists. I'm sure someone will be able to tell you which spider you saw.


Jack DeAngelis, PhD
Extension Entomologist (ret.)
author Living with Bugs: http://www.livingwithbus.com/bug_book.html