...this was just a quick opportunistic photo when my wife called me over to the flowerbed she had been working on, so I did not have any way of containing the live specimen to flip it over. My wife later added the detail that she had observed numerous small spiderlings scattering from the rock she lifted to reveal this one big one, which she presumed were its offspring.

Your suggestion of Tigrosa reminded me that one of my previous spider photos (from inside my house) was identified in that genus:

I've wondered about that image before but didn't take full notice of the ventral. I think your other one may be Tigrosa aspersa too. We're still learning how to separate these. The ventral looks more like T. aspersa to me (we have more information on them now than we did when that one was placed).

Here's the ventral of another one I think might be T. aspersa next to a T. helluo. T. aspersa has a bit of a "V" design and T. helluo is just spotted.


I just want to wait for a second opinion before I move them.

I agree, I think this newer specimen is most likely Tigrosa aspersa, but I'm personally not too sure about the older one. I'm not opposed to moving that older one to T. aspersa... but I just really worry that we need more voucher specimens of these so we know we're on the right track. Had I known back then what I do now, I probably wouldn't have been so hasty to move that older one to a species level. But comparing that older one to one that I feel pretty sure really is T. helluo, I can't see a whole lot of difference in the abdomen venters (not enough to feel confident either way, that is). I don't know how variable Tigrosa venters are yet, haven't seen enough verified specimens.


But I think Laura probably catches some things in the patterning that even I hadn't really yet, so I totally trust her eye with these.

Here's Allen Brady's recent paper that has been making most of this Tigrosa work possible lately: http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_free/JoA_v40_n2/arac-40-2-182.pdf.

make me reconsider. I was also looking at how the spinnerets seem to point inward (they're not too clear though and maybe it has more to do with the state the spider is in) and the lighter coloration around the book lungs. The median carapace stripe looks like it might be short like on T. aspersa ... but the spider also looks purple, lol. That color could definitely be throwing me off.

I apologize for that unfortunate photographic effect. This was an indoor shot and I used a fluorescent lamp to increase the light level - with the unanticipated effect of creating a purple cast on the subject.