Arthro-Pod EP 123: Brown Recluse Spiders with Rick Vetter

 

Today on Arthro-Pod, the gang meets up with Dr. Rick Vetter of UC Riverside to bring you buckets of info on the brown recluse spider. This species of arachnid seems to inspire the most fear of all our eight legged friends. Tune in to hear all about their biology, why they seem to do well living in our homes, and some facts about their venom and bite. Maybe after hearing what we have to say, you'll see these spiders in a slightly different light!

The "face" of a brown recluse spider, Jody Green Nebraska Extension

If you have an interest in learning more about brown recluse spiders, we highly encourage you to buy and read Rick's book which can be found at these links:

Cornell Press

Kindle 

Bookshop.org

The famous "fiddle" on the top of a brown recluse spider. Lisa Ames, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org 

Show notes

Rick Vetter's website

The known range of brown recluse spider establishment. 

Brown recluse spiders on a glue board trap, Jody Green Nebraska Extension

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This episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Beginning/ending theme: "There It Is" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Arthro-Pod Episode 30: Get to Know the Brown Recluse

Hi there bug lovers! On today's show Mike and Jonathan are talking all about the infamous brown recluse! While this eight-legged animal may inspire fear in the heart of many, perhaps it is just misunderstood? Tune in to learn about where the brown recluse lives, what may actually be responsible for those gross pictures you see online, and how to identify if you have a brown recluse or not!

Helpful size comparison of brown recluse to an American quarter (Jim Kalisch; UNL Entomology)

Here are our show notes with some helpful quotations pulled by Mike:

"From the beginning, the diagnosis of brown recluse spider bite was based on supposition much more than fact"
http://www.labmed.theclinics.com/article/S0272-2712(06)00015-1/abstract

"2,055 brown recluse spiders...were collected...in a home in Lenexa, KS. Additional collections from more typically infested homes in Missouri and Oklahoma in 2001 yielded 45 and 30 brown recluse spiders, respectively. Despite these infestations, no envenomations of the inhabitants of these three homes occurred. Considering the levels of infestations with no bites in the homes presented here, nonendemic areas in the United States, which typically lack recluse spider populations and have had zero to few verified specimens of the spider, do not have sufficient numbers of brown recluse spiders to make envenomation a likely scenario."

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1603/0022-2585-39.6.948

"Brown recluse spiders are not found in Canada. Hobo spiders have not been reliably implicated in  dermonecrosis. Worldwide, spider-bite envenomation is an unlikely cause of dermonecrosis."

http://www.cfp.ca/content/cfp/50/8/1098.full.pdf

"In total, 1,773 arachnids [were submitted] from 49 states. Participants from states at least half within the known brown recluse distribution submitted Loxosceles spiders 32–89% of the time. From 25 of 29 states completely or almost completely outside of the range of Loxosceles spiders, no recluse spiders were submitted."

https://academic.oup.com/jme/article/42/4/512/910901/Arachnids-Submitted-as-Suspected-Brown-Recluse

"The diagnosis of brown recluse spider bite is overused for dermonecrotic wounds of uncertain etiology"

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064402259776

"The medical community from non-endemic Loxosceles areas often makes loxoscelism diagnoses solely on the basis of dermonecrotic lesions where Loxosceles spiders are rare or non-existent."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041010103001739

"Among both physicians and the general public, the perceived threat of spider bites far exceeds the actual risk. The misdiagnosis of spider bites is given to a wide spectrum of dermatologic conditions, some of which are far more dangerous than a spider bite."

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmra041184

The six eyes that help to ID a brown recluse (Jim Kalisch; UNL Entomology)

Questions? Comments? 

Follow the hosts on Twitter @JLarson_UNL, @JodyBugsmeUNL, and @MSkvarla36

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This episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Beginning/ending theme: "There It Is" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0