John, you may have found T. pennsylvanicum as well. Note the shape on the lateral views of the palp. I've put thumbnails below for side-by-side comparison. Note the shape of the clear part projecting toward the tip of the palp. It has a hook on T. neshamini but blunt on T. pennsylvanicum (see lateral views in Levi, 1957). This may also be an artifact of unequal rotation of the palps--one picture is taken at a slightly different angle from the other.



Note the subtle difference in the overall shape of the palps below. Do you see more bulge in the palp on the left (possible T. pennsylvanicum)?

I found another of this one and was able to nail the palp pose to the T. pennsylvanicum diagram. Also the central black stripe on the carapace does extend between the eyes on this one while not on the other. Not sure what's up with the bit about the light line at the edge of the carapace but I'm convinced this is T. pennsylvanicum. I'll post the new photos later.

a better outcome than one of each! I'm glad it looks like I didn't make a fuss over nothing. Kevin Pfeiffer wrote back and said he couldn't find the images (because they had been moved and I had linked to the species images page instead of individual images). I replied with proper links but haven't heard back yet.

that matches the diagrams for T. pennsylvanicum very closely. I've dissected four of them at this point and they were all very similar to each other but rather different from the original T. neshamini.

The more I look at your T. pennsylvanicum specimens, the more distinct they seem from your original T. neshamini. Just look at the abdomen pattern! Now you need to find some females of each. Good luck!

they are pretty distinct, I suppose I was trying to think they looked alike because it seemed so unlikely that I would have found both. I netted the last three at the edge of a woods in a thick stand of wild flowers which is more consistent with the habitat for T. pennsylvanicum.

I should say thanks for putting so much time into this on a Holiday :) Me, I'm just here dissecting spiders to the sound of fireworks.

if it weren't for the differences in the description of the two as I pointed out in the other discussion. The fact that they both have the black line at the edge of the carapace and no line between the eyes seems to point to T. neshamini. It would be neat if I had found both but I think it's unlikely. Maybe just a slight variation in the position of the parts of the palp, I've noticed sometimes things can get a little skewed while trying to remove the palp and a couple of times I've had to nudge things back into position to match a diagram. I would say these images are at slightly different rotations

Some other things to consider regarding this spider vs. the first. Levi, 1957 mentions that T. pennsylvanicum has black spots on legs while T. neshamini has dusky spots. Are both of these specimens consistent in that characteristic? How about the margin of the carapace? Levi mentions a "narrow light line near the edge" of the carapace in T. pennsylvanicum but a "fine black border" in T. neshamini. Again, are your specimens consistent? Are the abdomen patterns the same or similar enough?

I have no experience with either one of these species and do not know how much variation is within each. I just don't want to jump to any conclusions on this spider.

on the carapace but the new posting does have distinctly different coloring, perhaps it was freshly molted? At any rate since this has turned out to be contentious I will move these back to genus.

Edit: I should have said maybe the earlier posting was newly molted.