The Brown Recluse Spider

Dear readers, consider this post a bit of a promise.

A recent story about a fantastic weekend spent in and around High Park and building a debris hut mentioned the presence of Brown Recluse spiders and Black Widows in Ontario. The information garnered a few comments, more specifically questioning whether there was evidence the Black Widow or the Brown Recluse made their homes in or had been spotted in our fair province. So far entomologists who have contacted me agree the Black Widow has been spotted, but the Brown Recluse has not.

I will be speaking with my instructor Skeet Sutherland next week to add his opinion to the mix and hope to add information from a few different people.  Hopefully I can also find some photos.

Looking forward to learning more about spiders. In the meantime I would invite any readers to weigh in.

Many thanks in advance.

Emily (Who thinks spiders are amazing but gets the shivers when she thinks of any eight legged creature bigger than a dime) Mathieu.

Added note: Mulling over the future spider post and hoping/ planning to include explanations on where these spiders do make their natural home in North America and how they could have ended up in and around Ontario. Hitchhiking was one suggested option and I am sure there are other personal stories that belong in that mix. I also wanted to add that clearly the province is a large, ecologically diverse place but sometimes in short article information that is important in terms of clarifying people's positions or depth of knowledge gets left out. Hoping to do a better job with the next round of spider information and looking forward to adding that detail and expanding on everyone's positions.

Comments

[Shaun Hedican]

Check out the indigenous Wolf spider, some get as large as Tarantula