Arachnida: The Black Button Spider or Back Widow Spider

Instead of having a fear of spiders, I find them rather fascinating especially the tarantulas. There are over 42 000 species of spiders in the world. We have five Latrodectus species native to South Africa: the renivulvatus, cinctus, karooensis, indistinctus and the brown botton spider - rhodesienses.

The Button spider is part of the comb-footed/Theridiidae family. They have fine serrated hair on their back feet, the females are black or brown in colour with a rounded abdomen and have spinnerets at the end of their abdomens where they make their silk. The black button spider has a red marking on her abdomen which fades the older they get. The male spider is a lighter colour with a brown stripe down their backs.

On the main photo you can see the spider repairing her silky web and her pray wrapped up and tied to a branch. As soon as an insect lands on the web, the snare breaks and the spider will wrap it to secure it for later consumption.

Spiders only bite when feeling threatened, they are not aggressive and will often play dead. This spider has a neurotoxic venom which affects the central nervous system. Their bite is not fatal, only very painful but can lead to complications especially in young children, people with sensitivity to spider bites and the elderly, best to seek medical attention for anti-venom treatment. Some symptoms you will experience is severe muscle pain, cramps, sweating, nausea and headaches.

The Button spider female produces two rounded and spiked egg sacs during summer.

The female at 40 mm is quite a bit bigger than the male 20 mm as you can see in this photo. It was really hard to spot him at first but I was over the moon to get this photo with them both in it. The female went up to her one egg suck to secure it with extra silk as it was a windy day. This female did not eat the male after mating due to the fact that she was already full, feasting on insects.

Unfortunately, not very clear as she kept moving, you can see the red dorsal marking on the rounded abdomen of this female black button/widow spider.

Image Credit

Photos were taken with a Samsung S7.

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