Their development is slow and is influenced by weather conditions and food availability. Spiderlings emerge from the egg sac in about a month or less. Each female may produce several egg sacs over a period of several months. The female lays about 50 eggs that are encased in an off-white silken sac that is about 2 – 3 inches in diameter. Brown Recluse Spider Reproductionīrown Recluse Spiders lay eggs from May through July. Like most spiders, Brown Recluse spiders mainly prey upon insects. Males will move around more when hunting while females do not usually stray far from their web. Unlike most web weavers, Brown Recluse Spiders leave these webs at night to hunt. The web serves as the spiders daytime retreat and it is often constructed in an undisturbed corner in one of the locations mentioned above. Brown Recluse Spiders seem to favour cardboard when dwelling in human residences, possibly because it mimics the rotting tree bark which they naturally inhabit.īrown Recluse Spiders build irregular webs that frequently include a shelter consisting of disorderly threads of very sticky, off-white to greyish threads. Outdoors, brown recluse spiders may be found underneath logs, loose stones in rock piles and stacks of wood. They also may be found in outbuildings such as barns, sheds, greenhouses and garages. Indoors, they may be found in attics, basements, crawl spaces, cellars, cupboards and closets.īrown Recluse Spiders may seek shelter in storage boxes, shoes, clothing, folded linens, hanging picture frames and behind furniture. Brown Recluse Spiders thrive in human-altered environments. In their favoured habitats, their populations are usually dense. The Brown Recluse Spiders habitat is usually a dark, undisturbed site which sometimes can be either indoors or outdoors. Brown Recluse Spider Habitat and Spider Webs Brown Recluse Spiders can be distinguished from scytodids as recluse spiders abdomens have no coloration pattern nor do their legs, which also lack spines. Only a few other spiders have 3 pairs of eyes arranged this way, such as the Spitting Spiders (scytodids). Whereas most spiders have eight eyes, recluse spiders have only six eyes that are arranged in pairs in a semicircle on the forepart of the cephalothorax (the first (anterior) major body section), with one median pair and two lateral pairs. The juvenile stages closely resemble the adults except for their size and they are a slightly lighter color. Males are slightly smaller in body length than females, however, males have proportionally longer legs.īoth male and female brown recluse spiders are venomous. Their body is around 3 – 8 millimetres long and about 3 – 16 millimetres wide. They have long, thin brown legs which are also covered with fine hairs.Īdult Brown Recluse Spiders have a leg span of about 24 millimetres. Brown Recluse Spiders are covered with many fine hairs that give the spider a velvet appearance. The Brown Recluse Spiders colors can range from a light tan to a dark brown, however, they can also appear a deep yellow color. In the mature brown recluse spider as well as some other species of recluse spiders, the dark violin marking is well defined, with the neck of the violin pointing toward the bulbous abdomen. A related species, the brown violin spider, is found in Hawaii. Brown Recluse Spiders are generally not found west of the Rocky Mountains. In the southern states, the Brown Recluse Spider is native from central Texas to western Georgia. Their native range lies roughly south of a line from southeastern Nebraska through southern Iowa, Illinois and Indiana to southwestern Ohio. The Brown Recluse Spider is found mainly in the central Midwestern states southward to the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, a few non-native species have become established in limited areas of the country. The Brown Recluse Spider and ten additional species of Loxosceles are native to the United States. The Brown Recluse Spider is a reclusive creature that seeks and prefers seclusion. There are over 100 species of the Recluse spider, the Brown Recluse spider being the best known of the species. Recluse spiders are a venomous genus of spider known for their venomous necrotic (death of cells and living tissue) bite. They are also known as fiddle-back or violin spiders. The Brown Recluse Spider (Loxosceles reclusa) belongs to the genus Loxosceles.
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