The Widow Spiders of Florida

Entomologists of the Division of Plant Industry, Florida Department of Agriculture, provide an identification service for the State of Florida of insects, mites, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and other arthropods. Spiders, particularly, seem to arouse the curiosity of many people who submit specimens for identification and request control recommendations. Like the snakes, spiders are little understood and much maligned by most people, usually with little or no justification. So far as known, with the exception of the members of two small families, all spiders have poison glands. The venom is used to kill their prey and as a means of defense. However, only a few species, such as certain tarantulas and other spiders of the tropics, produce a venom virulent enough to be harmful to man. Moreover, most species are too timid and do not attempt to bite even when handled roughly. In Florida, only the spiders belonging to the group commonly called widows are capable of inflicting a bite serious to man. The bite of the larger wolf spiders and the fearsome looking silk spider is little worse than the sting of a bee or wasp. Most other native spiders seldom bite man, and many are incapable of doing so. While the incidence of bites by widow spiders is not high, the widow spiders are .. ‘ fairly common in Florida, and questions regarding them are received frequently by the entomologists of the Division of Plant Industry who curate the Florida State Collection of Arthropods. The seriousness of the bite of a mature female widow spider suggests that the general public should be correctly informed concerning this group of spiders, including their prompt recognition and the treatments recommended for bites. The Widow Spiders of Florida is the second in an. irregularly appearing series of publications relating to the insects and other arthropods of Florida and neighboring land areas-the southeastern United States, the Bahama Islands, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and the land areas in and round the Gulf of Mexico-with emphasis on taxonomy, ecology, biology, and zoogeography. Emphasis in this series, initiated early in 1965 with the publication of Lepidoptera of Florida by C. P. Kimball, is on the Florida fauna.