Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i am in need of a rang map for black widows for a project of mine if anyone has one of knows of a site that has one please help
chris

>>i am in need of a rang map for black widows for a project of mine if anyone has one of knows of a site that has one please help
>>chris

I don't think there really is much of a range map out there..at least not a 'detailed' one that I am aware of. You may want to try to contact Robert Breene, PhD (SpiderBob) over at the American Tarantula Society (www.atshq.org)...look under the ATS staff link for his email. He's a noted arachnologist and could likely provide you with more detailed info than myself. I've supplied him in the past with northern widows.

Broadly/generally speaking, northerns are found through the nothern half of the US and parts of southern canada. Southerns of course through the southern half of the US. Westerns typically are the western half of the US though more along the southwestern states then the northwestern states. Browns are mainly a central american species that has been expanding northward along the southern border regions of the US gulf coast states. Red widows I believe are found only in some areas of Florida (can't remember if they have been expanding along the southern parts of the gulf coast states or not).

I happen to be in an area where there is a distinct demarcation line of the ranges of sourtherns vs northerns. I find northerns everywhere where I work, but just a couple miles down the road and southward from there all you find are southerns. It's quite interesting actually when I get phone calls from people who caught widows and want to bring them in to me. I can often ID the widow based on where the person found the spider before actually looking at the spider to confirm it.
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Wyvern

If you have or can find the book " Spiders and their kin" by Golden Books , it has a map, which includes L.variolus and L. bishopi. If you do some searches on yahoo, you should be able to find maps of at least L.mactans and variolus.