How do y’all identify the differences between southern and northern widows yall find? Most of the widows I have been coming across I was pretty sure they were northern widows since they displayed the red stripe and dots along their back. Most of the windows I have found back home are southern and they were usually mostly black with maybe a singular dot and an undisrupted hourglass. I’ve posted northern widows that have been research graded and when i’ll post another northern widow suddenly now some of the people that graded me before now claim those are southerns. I was sure in my skills but recently Ive been running around in loops seeing if I’m missing anything, Im just looking for more advice so I can become even better at identifying widow species
I think the easiest way is to directly ask in the comment of the observation. Then the identifier or other people who know about it will see it directly and can answer. I then always tag observations with helpful comments with “IDcomment” so I can find it again. - I must confess I didn’t have a clue what you were talking about and had to look it up.
Here are some comments from Richard Bradley, in his book on Common Spiders of North America, 2013.
Southern BW: “In this species, the bottom portion of the hourglass is usually rectangular, not triangular. The back of the abdomen can be plain black, or it may have a series of red spots, a red line, or red-centered white marks. There is usually a red dot at the end of the abdomen near the spinnerets…. the males and immature females are often more colorful with conspicuous red and white abdominal markings, but they also possess the red hourglass.
Northern BW: ….”more frequently marked with red on the top of the abdomen, and the hourglass mark is broken by a black gap in the center.”
In my limited experience with these two species, that gap color is apparent, when you can view the underside. So it will be a black gap (Northern), or no longer a gap b/c it is red, making the figure a true-looking hourglass (Southern).
I hope this helps you some.