Not the best ventral, but I didn't want to kill it, so this ventral is shot through a glass vial.

I am going to need to have Laura or Lynette take a look at this. The ventral reminds me a little of Tigrosa grandis. However, T. grandis do not live that far east and the dorsal is wrong for grandis. Likewise, I am not for T. aspersa either since the carapace stripe extends all the way, unlike T. aspersa. If anything, this still is looking more T. helluo. However, the ventral is slightly different than what I am used to seeing (perhaps this may be because your individual is not adult).

Tigrosa helluo ventral:


Thanks for getting the ventral. You can also take ventral shots by putting the spider in a plastic ziplock and turning it over. If you do it at a reasonable speed, you will not hurt the spider. Likewise, your method seems to work just fine.

to see how variable the ventrals are. There are a couple things about this one that made me consider T. georgicola, but overall it looks more like T. helluo and the range makes that ID more likely too.

...heading to Massachusetts for college next year. I will try my best to make time to collect and identify some of these. Maybe then we will get better idea of what is going on with these variations.