Talk:Latrodectus

untitled
Someone knowledgeable should double-check the facts in here. Before I edited it, the style was so confusing that some of the facts were obscured.Dave 05:58, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I haven't looked at this page for quite some time. A certain amount of misinformation has crept in, so I'll try to straighten it out a bit. P0M 06:22, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I hope none of it is my fault. Feel free to look at older versions, but the style got so bad that I doubt you want to revert. Dave 06:29, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Looks great.Dave 13:00, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The page for black widow, covering the three american varieties of widow spider, currently claims that the female eating the male after mating is rare. This page says female widow spiders frequently eat the males. This appears to be a contradiction. DanFarnsy (talk) 06:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This description does not include basic physical dimensions for any example of the species in this genus. This is such a fundamental part of any description that I am rather shocked. I wish I knew how big they are: my understanding is that the Australian Latrodectus hasselti female is about a half of an inch from tip of abdomen to tip of cephalothorax. Johneapriddle (talk) 22:07, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Wording
Interesting and informative article. However, the fifth paragraph contains the following,"In common with other members of the Theridiidae family, the widow spiders construct a cobweb, i.e., an irregular tangle of sticky silken fibers. The black widow spider very frequently hangs upside down near the center of its web and waits there for insects to blunder in and get stuck. Then, before the insect can extricate itself, the spider rushes over to bite it and swathe it in a silken shroud. If the spider feels threatened it will quickly let itself down to the ground on a safety line of silk." The same wording may be found at, http://www.spidy.goliathus.com/english/article-black-widow-spider.php, paragraph four, in the section titles "Widow spider".--LMichaelRey (talk) 14:05, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Commons
Why is the Widow spider linked only to one species on Commons? P0M 06:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

spider silk strength
I added the section on latrodectus silk strength. It overlaps with areas that were covered in the Species section. I haven't eliminated the overlapping areas because there is a claim there that latrodectus silk is thicker than other spider silk. I couldn't find any confirmation of this although it is a fact that is repeated several times on the web without any documentation. Unless some documentation for the claim can be found, I propose to delete it plus the other information on latrodectus spider silk strength in the Species section.Davefoc (talk) 00:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Very dated but here is some info on this to corroborate that its silk is thicker. ... larger in diameter .... The article looks scientific but I don't know if this website is a reliable source. I'll leave it to someone more experienced. Karel Adriaan (talk) 02:40, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Domain removed from title box
Why did UtherSRG remove the domain (Eukarya) from the title box? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davefoc (talk • contribs) 22:20, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

KDS4444 September 21, 2010 edits concerning distinguishing male and female spiders
KDS4444 added this paragraph to the article: "Not all adult female black widows exhibit the red hourglass on their abdomen-- some may have a pair of red spots or have no marking at all. But any markings that do appear will be bright red. Adult male black widows can usually be distinguished from the females in that the males are 1/4 the size of the female, are usually gray or brown rather than black, and while they may sometimes have an hourglass shape on their abdomen, this hourglass is usually yellow or white, not red. The bite of a male black widow is not considered dangerous to humans: it is the bite of the adult female black widow from her much-larger venom sacks that has given this spider its dangerous reputation. While there is great variation in specifics by species and by gender, any spider exhibiting a red hourglass on the abdomen and having a shiny black body is an adult female black widow."

I believe there are several problems with the above:
 * 1) Not all spiders in Latrodectus are referred to as black widows.  Latrodectus geometricus are commonly referred to as brown widows
 * 2) The markings on the abdomen of brown widows are more orange than red to my eyes so the general statement that the marks on the ventral side of a Latrodectus female abdomen are red is not always true.
 * 3) Black widow males are in the range of half (I believe there is considerable variation on this) as long as females and their body mass would be about 1/8 that of females as a result.  The statement that males are 1/4 the size of females seems to be wrong based either on length or mass and it is so ambiguous that it doesn't add information even if it were true.
 * 4) There are no citations that accompany any of the added paragraph.

I didn't delete it because it was a good faith edit and the content was appropriate to the article. However without significant editing I believe the paragraph is so inaccurate and so poorly documented that it should be deleted. --Davefoc (talk) 17:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

No Black Widow article?
It's really sad that someone saw fit to whitewash the record of the black widow by giving it a generic redirect to Latrodectus. There's got to be a frickin' ton of material on the subject.

I'll save you the time: No, I'm not going to "Be Bold", I have better ways to waste my time than create an article that the same person will find excuses to trim to bits and redirect again when it's small enough. "Be Bold" is just a nice way of saying "Yeah, whatever. Good luck, sucker." 71.197.192.180 (talk) 17:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you are still watching this talk page, but the common name "black widow" refers to at least three species, but not the entire genus. The ambiguity of common names often creates problems like this, and wikipedia usually favors taxonomic classifications of life. Weebro55 (talk) 04:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirecting Black Widow here makes no sense, it should redirect to the disambiguation page. Djapa Owen (talk) 02:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposed move at Black Widow.
For any editors concerned, there is a proposed moved at the disambiguation page Black Widow. If you have anything to add to the discussion, please do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Black_Widow#Proposed_move Weebro55 (talk) 03:53, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Totally agree, that disambig problem for black widow needs to be fixed. DaltonCastle (talk) 06:14, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Latrodectus in Romania
In Romania,first time, Latrodectus were discovered at Sulina in 1961 and on a small island of the Razim lake in 1971,when after many years, Latrodectus specie were believed as dissapeared in Romania .Nowadays a black Latrodectus specie can be found in Dobrogea and lately in Galati or Constanta were few cases of bitten people has been reported.(the far south east area of Romania)

If someone can add this info to the page would be appreciated.Unfortunately i don't know precisely which specie. 89.137.224.60 (talk) 04:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Description problems
This article is about the genus Latrodectus and yet the description section is about one species, or perhaps three. This is wrong and needs to be fixed. Djapa Owen (talk) 02:19, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Latrodectus vs. "widow spider" vs. "black widow spider"
Are Latrodectus, "widow spider" and "black widow spider" synonymous? Widow spider redirects to Latrodectus, but Black widow spider has its own article, which however seems to treat the term as being identical with Latrodectus. Should Black widow spider and Latrodectus be merged, or is there a significant difference I am missing? Iapetus (talk) 11:41, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Redirected and fixed. KDS444 (talk) 01:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
 * However, having just said that, I believe the policy on article naming with regard to species is to use the common name, if one exists-- in the which case, this article should be under Widow spider, not Latrodectus. I will now create an WP:RfC below so the subject can be discussed.  KDS444 (talk) 01:19, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Article to be under "Ladrodectus" or under "Widow spider"?
Article currently exists under the animal's scientific name, but there is a common name in wide use. Should article be moved to the common name in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME? KDS444 (talk) 01:25, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Armbrust The Homunculus 22:24, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Latrodectus → Widow spider – There was a sizable debate a few years ago regarding the renaming of the article "Black widow" that ended in a "No consensus" outcome. However, that discussion never considered moving this article into the namespace "Widow spider", which is also given as a synonym in the lead paragraph and is an accepted common name for these species of spider. This request, then, is to move Latrodectus to Widow spider in accordance with the Manual of Style policy given at WP:COMMONNAME. KDS 4444 Talk  07:11, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Keep genera at the names of the genera, not at vernacular names that are uncommonly used. Nom is confusing "common" in the sense of "in lay terms" with the sense used at  WP:COMMONNAME, which is "most frequent".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * So SMcCandlish, which one is "Latrodectus"? KDS 4444  Talk  01:16, 25 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose: This article is about the entire genera--which actually includes several species with other, more well-known common names, ie. the button spiders and the redback--thus I agree with SMcCandlish's reasoning above. Don't see how moving from accepted scientific nomenclature to a common name that properly references only some of the article subjects would help either with style or clarity. Shoebox 2   talk  13:31, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose not all species of this genus are known as widow spiders, and in that case it's doubtful that the genus as a whole is referred to as "the widow spiders" more often than Latrodectus. &mdash;innotata 22:42, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose not only are not all species of this genus widely or popularly known as widow spiders, but "widow spiders" is a synthetic name and not common at all among the lay public, most of whom have heard of no "widow spider" other than "The Black Widow". "Widow spider" is used loosely and not definitively among naturalists who have coined arbitrary variations on the original "black widow" to accommodate other species with similar body shapes. It is neither formal, standard, nor stable. The name "widow spider" is not likely to be helpful as a search title to the article, though one might create a redir to Latrodectus in case someone happens to wonder, or more likely one might create a disambiguation to Latrodectus, Theridion, Steatoda and a couple of other genera in the Theridiidae (possibly even other families) that are similar in appearance and habits and sometimes similarly referred to. In various countries people have other names such as "button spiders" comb-footed, comb-clawed spiders, house spiders and other names that may or may not apply to one or more members of the genus, and often apply to other genera as well. And that point doesn't even get us past monolingual English speaking countries at that; the Theridiidae are not confined to the continental USA, please note. The obsession with the "common name" rule for naming articles should not be permitted to extend past the cases where the common name is stable and matches the relevant taxa exactly. For example, "butterfly" is pretty nearly precisely limited to that subset of the moth families known as the Rhopalocera (with some reservations about the Hesperiids and the Hedylids of course), so the rule does little harm there, except that it leaves us with no more coherent and efficient "common" name for Lepidoptera than "butterflies and moths". But in most cases, such as the Theridiidae and in particular Latrodectus, the only coherent (let alone sane) name is the taxon name, with one or more disambiguation articles to deal with the common names. Trying to deal with the need for a taxon entry by redirecting it to a job lot of non-matching common name articles would be counter-productive to put it politely. The simple, practical, helpful and responsible rule is: when in doubt, use the most definitive title for the article and add redirections and disambiguations for all alternatives. That is the case for all but a few dozen taxa where such common names exist. Most taxa have no common name at all, and most of the rest have no well-defined group that matches the common name, and most of the common names not only do not match any definite group, but also are unstable and local in their application. That even is true, heaven help us, for common names coined by naturalists for their popular books. Incoherent flapping about using the most universally popular alternatives should be ignored and avoided where there is no such stable and definitive popular name, and if we concede the existence of other languages, there is no such name at all.  JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose The term Widow Spider doesn't appear to be in common usage. Finding it not preceded by Black, White or False seems to be rare. The button spiders (within this clade) aren't referred to as widow spiders in any references I found. Nor were Katipos or Redbacks. Outside of Wikipedia I can find some sources referring to Latrodectus as "the widow spiders" but not in scientific sources and usually in sources fudging information.&#32;SPACKlick (talk) 22:41, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Male Venom
Regarding this: "The female's venom is at least three times more potent than that of the males, making a male's self-defense bite ineffective."

I don't really understand why that would be the case. I don't see anything in this article about these spiders having an immunity to their own venom. Looking around the internet, there doesn't seem to be a definite answer as to whether animals are immune to the venom of their own species as there hasn't been much research on the subject. So, are these spiders immune to their own venom? If that is the case it should be worked into the article. Primium mobile (talk) 15:31, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't have personal expert knowledge of the point, but I don't see where there is a suggestion that this has anything to do with immunity to their own venom, though such immunities are not uncommon among venomous species in general. However, It would not be surprising if the males did have less effective venom, because they are too small to go for the kind of prey that females specialise in. The South African button spider females for example, prey largely on large, heavily armoured beetles and crickets, which take a lot of killing, though they do yield a lot of food per kill, but the males are tiny, and for as long as they use their own webs, they neither need so much food, nor could they kill it if they did somehow catch a toktokkie beetle. The kind of food that they would kill, midges and the like, would not need much venom. Makes sense, I would guess. But as I said, I don't really know. JonRichfield (talk) 19:39, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The way the sentence reads, it sounds like the female isn't affected by the defensive bite of the male because her venom is three times stronger. But it doesn't give any reference point for how powerful her venom is, (one third of a million dollars is still a nice chunk of money) or explain why her venom being three times stronger even makes a difference. Primium mobile (talk) 11:44, 28 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree that's what the sentence was saying and I've removed it because I cannot find a source &#32;SPACKlick (talk) 09:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Fact Checking Still Required
The facts in this article still need to be looked over by someone knowledgeable in this area. Even a layman such as myself can see a few obvious problems here. Paragraph 2 of the introduction states:

However, there is no way of telling whether an individual is male or female until diagnosed

And the description section reiterates:

... It is impossible to figure out if a latrodectus is female, spiderling, or male just by looking at it.

This contradicts other pages that talk about various Widow Spiders and Redbacks which state that the female of the species is easily identifiable due to the fact that they are substantially larger, and have different colouration. It also could use a rewrite as it is badly worded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HappyGod (talk • contribs) 03:33, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed/ removed.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Although mature males and females can be distinguished, immatures are not so easy; perhaps this is what was originally meant? But it was unclear. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:26, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

female is the poisonous one
Hi all, it seems to me that pretty much everywhere it should say "female" is says "male" in this article? 73.92.201.12 (talk) 05:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)


 * A vandal edited the article on 10 February, swapping many occurrences of "male" and "female". I've reverted to before this edit. A few sensible edits have got undone, but the mix of vandalism and attempted repair is too complicated for me to try to fix piecemeal. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:42, 11 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The title of this section is true, but I see no mention of it in this article. If a man gets bit by a male black widow spider, then that person has nothing to worry about. Source:
 * "26 \ 00:03:02,78 --> 00:03:05,74 \ the male [Latrodectus] spider is much smaller than the female [Latrodectus] \ 27 \ 00:03:05,74 --> 00:03:11,63 \ and is not considered to be dangerous"
 * Video and subtitles: https://archive.org/details/0769_Black_Widow_Spider_Her_Life_Cycle_and_Her_Enemies_18_04_42_00, https://archive.org/download/0769_Black_Widow_Spider_Her_Life_Cycle_and_Her_Enemies_18_04_42_00/0769_Black_Widow_Spider_Her_Life_Cycle_and_Her_Enemies_18_04_42_00_3mb.asr.srt
 * --User123o987name (talk) 06:04, 25 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Videos like this are not what WP categorizes as reliable sources. I'm unaware of any scientific literature comparing the venoms of males versus females of any Latrodectus species, and that's the only kind of source I would consider reliable for something like this. Dyanega (talk) 16:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

New species in South Africa
A new species of Latrodectus has been found in South Africa. Publication of the description is currently under review. Watch this space... Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:42, 9 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Latrodectus umbukwane has officially been described (it's paywalled). Please see Latrodectus umbukwane, which I have started writing. I'm not a subject specialist on spiders so feel free to contribute to the draft. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:12, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Requests for Page Improvements
I wish that this page gave information about egg laying, which would have been very helpful when trying to understand how they rear it young. In addition, it would be helpful if this page provided information about the life span of the spider, which would have helped give context to their overall lives. Lastly, this page could include more information about visual protective behavior that the spiders may use, which would provide helpful information about the evolutionary strengths of the species. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliaskittle (talk • contribs) 20:58, 6 October 2020 (UTC)


 * There are 32 species in this genus, and each one has its own characteristic features with respect to the questions you are asking. They cannot all be summarized on a single page; answers should be found on the individual articles for each respective species. This page is intended to give information that applies collectively to all 32 species in the genus, not individual traits. Dyanega (talk) 21:06, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Behavioral ecology post
This Wikipedia entry had a very extensive behavior section, which helps us understand the adaptations and strategies that the spider has developed in order to survive. I found the information on sexual cannibalism very interesting as well as the explanation on how these spiders feed. Three general categories that are missing from this article are diet, social behavior, and physiology. Information on the spider’s diet would help us better understand feeding behaviors and habitat selection, among other behaviors that determine certain living strategies. A section on social behavior would also give important information on how the spider lives and cooperates in groups. Finally, knowing more about the physiology of the spider could provide useful insight into special sensory or motor adaptations that affect the spider’s behaviors. The article is part of the WikiProject Spiders and has been rated as C-class on the project’s quality scale and as mid-importance on the importance scale. I would agree on both of these ratings, since the article is missing important sections that would be very useful and focuses specifically on a type of spider rather than general area of knowledge. Delanieludmir (talk) 04:22, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This article is not about a single species of spider, the issues you are raising are only appropriate to ask on a species-by-species basis. If you're doing a project, you need to pick articles about single species, not entire assemblages. Dyanega (talk) 17:04, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

species table giving length and weight
I think that a great addition to this article would be a table listing each of the 38 species giving lengths and weights for both adult males and females, at least a typical number for each and preferably a range (e.g., 95 percent central interval). I have no expertise in this area and am not prepared to work on this myself. Thanks to all who have brought this article to its current state. DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:54, 4 September 2023 (UTC)