Moved from Longjawed Orbweavers.

Here is a lateral view:

I feel reasonably confident that this is T. straminea -- the profile of the abdomen of the various species is used in all the literature, and the profile fits here -- but would have liked to get a better view of the epigyne (was too indistinct -- I wasn't entirely sure what I was seeing; the attempted dissection didn't help much).

-K

Sounds like it's probably T. straminea, but I'll wait for your final determination. Kevin, thanks for checking these specimens.

Here the lateral eyes are clearly farther apart than are the medial eyes. According to Levi (1981) this limits our possibilities somewhat; no tail beyond the spinnerets further limits the choices. I've come down to: T. straminea and T. pallescens.

Originally I thought that pallescens was the right choice, based on Paquin & Dupérré's book, but the description (all silver) doesn't fit. Levi describes the abdomen of straminea as so: "the upper, silvery half of each side is clearly delineated from the ventral half by a
straight line." Dondale et al (2003) write: "abdomen silvery dorsally ... silvery dorsal half abruptly changes to darker ventral half along even line." This certainly fits this specimen well.

To be certain, I will have to try to dissect the epigyne -- not so easy, but maybe I'll give it a shot.

-K