Geometricus

[Techuser]

http://img458.imageshack.us/img458/4695/img4218yz1.th.jpg (http://img458.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img4218yz1.jpg) http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3301/img4200ze9.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img4200ze9.jpg) http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/6351/img4196cb1.th.jpg (http://img235.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img4196cb1.jpg) http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/3716/img4219eq6.th.jpg (http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img4219eq6.jpg)

http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/9962/img8062ee5.jpg

The second shot is after a moult, the abdomen lost most of markings and became clearer

[Mary]

Is this part of the Black Widow family and is it venomous to us ???

[Techuser]

Yep, its also a latrodectus
wiki says the venom is twice stronger than the black widow, but it dont spreads trough the body
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_widow_spider

[buthus]

Great picks of my fav latro to watch hunt! They are definately the most elegant of the comb-foots when it comes to the kill.

One thing very interesting about geos is that they are fairly certain that the main split in latro species (a long time ago..in a continent far far away) was between the brown/light clads and the black clads. Up til recently the brown clads ONLY included geometricus. The discovery that L.rhodesiensis was actually a new species directly linked to geometricus changed that fact, but it also shows how almost perfect of a design geos are. On the otherhand the tred/macs are "trying" all kinds of costumes to deal with the niches they are finding themselves in. Probably the most extreme example is L.pallidus.

BTW...so far every so called geo "morph" that I've kept have all turned out about the same and this color transition has occured long after last molt. Not that there arent differences, but IMHO, the differences are not enough to justify the term "morph". I'd love to get my hands on some of the black/silver flavor geos and see if they too end up tasty hershy chocolate later in life.

[Mary]

I must admit I like the markings on it.

[Tegenaria]

cool Latros! I'd love to be able to observe them hunting!