Wow, Eric, it was like 3am, on a work night! So in my sleepy stupor, combined with my admittedly limited vocabulary, I needed to create a bit of onomatopoetic hyperbole to describe the experience of finding my first Mygalomorph.

What I was attempting to describe was the squeaking and clicking sounds this spider made as its tarsal claws clumsily scraped and tapped along both the metal and wood portions of the long flower box that runs the length of my patio. This is the first spider I've ever found aurally, as opposed to the usual process of beating tree limbs, flipping over rocks and mulch or inspecting seedheads and curled leaves.

Thanks for the complement, and for the english lesson. I'll try to stop picking up new words from Squidbillies from now on. :-)

all his mishaps with spider ID's and how to use Bugguide as an editor, chastising you're grammer is not suprising to me. ;)

Excellent images as usual.
Maybe email images to one of the authorities, he might be able to ID species based on palpal organs or location. From what I have read on other spider ID forums, he seems happy to help.

Also, is 14mm the body lentgh? They're not much bigger than your typical wolf spider, are they?

...and you had me in tears with your responses. :-D "Nope, wrong again." "Wow, way off this time." "Are you even trying?"

Looks like I'm on the right track then. I ran across mygalomorphae.org last week while searching for the more recent documents listed at the bottom here, and considered e-mailing either Jason Bond or Brent Hendrixson, the co-authors of "Two sympatric species of Antrodiaetus from southwestern North Carolina". Then, while trying to find out what the heck a "mating clasper" is, I found Brent patiently offering very helpful advice to the "Eric Eaton School of Grammar and Spider Mis-identification" graduates over at arachnoboards.com. :-) So I'll definitely send these pics off to Brent.

Yes, 14mm was body only, and I need to verify since I think he was still a little scrunched up in the single 1:1 snapshot photo I used for measurement. Adding the chelicerae and palps definitely makes him look bigger than the usual wolf spiders I see.

Not sure if the palp is critically diagnostic for identification. The document I referenced above mentions the presense of distally oriented "macroseta A" (figs. 4-5) (or "rarely absent, or rarely with macroseta B") on the ventral-distal tip of metatarsus I. Mine have a macroseta in that spot, but it's much shorter, and I can't find a definition of "macroseta B", and I don't own the document he's referencing for terminology. I haven't taken the time to count the other macrosetae on prolateral tibia I, which is also mentioned. These guys "play dead" so well that I've been able to examine them live under a dissecting scope in any orientation. Pretty neat!

I was going to point out my awareness of what appears to be a squinting modifier in Eric's school name, but that might be a " grammar mis-identification", so I'll leave it at that. :-)

just hope he doesn't go after my ID screw ups!

Great info. I am familiar with the links.
I would love to get my hands on a mouse spider.
Going to north FL soon in search of Sphodros.

Posted an image in frass for you as a follow up to your image commentary here, and looking forward to any info Brent or other has to offer. It would be nice if they could offer some ID's on the mygalomorph pages.

He asked me who this "Hollenbeck character" was.

Okay, I really did hear back from Brent. He asked for a hi-res image of the setae on prolateral tibia I. :-)

Now why would you bother with those other spiders? If you're looking for interesting primitives, Sami claims to have Antrodiaetus specimens larger than a tennis ball, and what is apparently the world's most lethal Red Kneed. Quite possibly the only Red Kneed in existence that could even be considered aggressive! Now that is exciting... to those who believe everything they read.