Moved from Coras.

Cranking the heat often 'awakens' hibernating insects and spiders in the home. I would see more ladybugs in the house during CT winters than anything.

Here's the email report that I received from Dr. Roger Pickavance, recently retired from the Biology Faculty at Memorial University, after he did a hands-on inspection of the preserved specimen:

"It's an adult female Coras montanus - as you suspected family Amaurobiidae. All amaurobiids have a cribellum of some sort, a small toothed plate (for combing silk) just anterior to the spinnerets on the ventral surface but often very difficult to see even if you know it's there. This is a frequently encountered species in NL, but more usually encountered in woods and clearings."

I see that the Genus Coras exists on BugGuide but there are no species pages for this Genus. I'm moving the images to the Genus page for now and maybe one of the editors will create a species page for Coras montanus.

The general look of it fits Amaurobiidae, and the setting is suggestive...most of the A's I know are sendentary, don't like to leave their webbing, thus the importance of the cleaning...was the house unoccupied for a while? If it was preserved, one could see if it was cribellate.

Great images! Eye arrangement is all wrong for a wolf spider. This is more likely to be a hacklemesh weaver in the family Amaurobiidae, but let the other spider experts weigh in. Classification changes have resulted in families being re-arranged....