on a conversation that we had so long ago that the referenced sites are no longer available. If you have some other ideas, maybe you could write them up under the Arachnological Forum so we can look at them all at once? In the meantime, I'll try to find some new references.

I just added comments on many of the M. celer identifying them as asperata, including one likely female. John and Jane have been moving the ones to which they were subscribed, but you might want to pick up the remainder. I recently posted another asperata specimen. Seeing two images of asperata in Spiders of the North Woods by Larry Weber (2003), pp. 148-149, also confirmed a consistent asperata pattern for me. They're looking pretty distinctive now.

As an aside, I just picked up a male mecaphesa whose pattern tells me it's celer. If it actually proves to be celer under a scope, then I think we're starting to get somewhere.

I was coasting around and happened to see this commentary. I just wanted to mention that Larry Weber's book has a handful of ID errors and I wouldn't use that book as anything official, to be honest. Some of the errors are so obvious to someone who knows spiders that it makes me feel skeptical of everything else in there since genitalia weren't checked on the spiders. (For what it's worth, I do think the M. asperata is actually correctly ID'd, but I just wanted to say that I think it better to base what we know on voucher specimens and diagrams/descriptions in papers.) I would trust your (Joe) opinion based on your experience with these over any photo in a book like that... and same goes for the other spider folks here. I guess I kind of soured on field guides once I got better with spiders and saw all the errors in them. I think I said a long time ago that I'd add my errata lists to the forum here somewhere, but still haven't done that. Here's part of the list for Larry's book, though:

Spiders of the North Woods by Larry Weber:
pg 72: Definitely not Araneus diadematus (I know it says "possibly Araneus diadematus," but those images are very unlike that species). The spider is most likely Araneus gemmoides, the "Catfaced spider."
pg 86-87: Neither spider on these pages is a Neoscona arabesca. The spiders are Cave Orbweavers, scientific name Meta ovalis, family Tetragnathidae (completely different family than what that section of the book is dealing with). The only other North American species in the genus, Meta dolloff, has only been found in caves in California so Meta ovalis is likely the only possibility in the "North Woods" area. See Meta ovalis compared to Neoscona arabesca.
pg 95: This is not that important, as the message is correct (that immature Pachygnatha build small, horizontal webs), but the spider pictured in that web image is not a Pachygnatha. Granted you can’t see the spider that well, but the legs are clearly banded in color, which doesn’t happen on Pachygnatha. The abdomen looks pretty off as well.
pg 113: The only known Gladicosa in the North Woods area is G. gulosa and that doesn't look like the male at all. I'm not positive what it really is, but I'd say a male Schizocosa or even a male Alopecosa instead. (Maybe not either of those, but I just think wolf spiders that haven’t been seen under a microscope should just be left as “wolf spider” in published literature, rather than placing them in a genus based on a guess; especially since the whole country or world might be basing what they learn on these images...)
pg 126: That spider is most likely an adult male Coras sp., not at all a Tegenaria domestica. The misidentification here is a little strange since the photo right next to it (pg 127) really is a Tegenaria domestica (I guess they can look kind of similar if you don't collect that species often).
pg 142: A change in taxonomy that was missed before the book was published: genus Castianeira is in Corinnidae, not Clubionidae where it is placed in the book.
pg 143: The spider pictured is not a Clubiona sp. Definitely one of the "Ground spiders" of family Gnaphosidae, but I couldn’t tell you what genus without a microscope exam.

I can't remember if I was finished with that or not, it's just what I had so far in the Word document. I'm probably overly harsh with field guides and I respect the authors for getting at least something out to the public on spiders... I just wish more editing would be done on things like this and actual arachnologists contacted for help. I remember in the other 'sister' guide to this book ("Spiders of the Carolinas"), the third spider in the book is a wolf spider ID'd as a mygalomorph and on one page labeled a female Misumenoides formosipes is a MALE Misumena vatia.... and the male pictured as Misumena vatia is actually Misumenoides formosipes. That's just the few I remember off hand, but I have a list typed up somewhere for that book and a few others, too. It just bugs me how easy they are to spot by someone who knows the subject... it tells me that people who know the subject were not contacted for editing and fact-checking. I guess I'm being anal, but I think anyone publishing a book should be. So books bug me when they have such mistakes, lol.
Long comment! Sorry!

Good stuff Mandy! N. arabesca is common here in Austin and definitely looks nothing like that! Howell/Jenkins' Spiders of the Eastern U.S. is also full of mis-IDs. I've been asking Hank for a list, but he hasn't gotten one to me yet. As I understand it, the publisher asked him to review a pre-print version of the book, he reported all the errors, and they proceded with the publication anyway, without even creating an errata page on the web as many computer books do.

Sheesh, why ask someone to review something and then not fix the reported errors? The publishing industry is so weird. I also learned from the arachnid listserv a while back that the creation of many new common names is something that publishers force authors to do... thus throwing new names into the world without even proposing them to the Common Names of Arachnids Committee.

I have a list typed up for Howell & Jenkins', too. Would love to one day see Hank's. There was an errata list that Lynette started in the forum a while back but now I can't find it. (Lynette, do you remember where that was?) I could post what I have there instead of in a long comment here.

Yes, it's here. I also just added it to the spider page, so we can find it easier.

I probably scanned right past it; I was looking in the same forum.

I also went through the "asperatus / celer sibling species" group and suggested which ones I thought were very likely M. asperata. Most of them were.

It's wonderful to have some voucher specimens and someone willing to work on this group. So just to be sure you are saying this one looks like M. asperata?

Oh no, not this one. This one might be celer. ;o) I went through all the photos of celer and made a comment saying "asperata" or "not celer." Many of them have been moved to asperata already. (Actually, it could be asperata, but I haven't seen a specimen with so much of the asperata pattern faded, so we probalby ought to wait.)

Thanks.