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The Spider Myths Site
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Links to Further Information

General Information:

The Arachnology Home Page
http://www.arachnology.be/Arachnology.html
A classified link index on all aspects of arachnology.

The American Tarantula Society
     http://www.atshq.org/
This site includes a number of illuminating online articles. See especially the one on how misinformation gets into kids' books:
     http://www.atshq.org/articles/kidbooks.html
and this one about scorpion myths:
     http://www.atshq.org/articles/scorpmyths.html

The American Arachnological Society
http://www.americanarachnology.org/index.html
The largest organization of professional arachnologists. Site includes a form for submitting arachnid questions to experts.

Jumping Spiders (a section of The Tree of Life web site)
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Salticidae&contgroup=Dionycha
Photos of the jumping spiders (family Salticidae) of the world, arranged according to the hierarchy of technical classification.

Australian Spiders FAQ
http://www.amonline.net.au/spiders/resources/general.htm

National Geographic Spider Fact Sheet
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_spiderfacts.html

The World Spider Catalog
http://research.amnh.org/entomology/spiders/catalog/INTRO1.html
A technical resource for the serious arachnologist, listing all named spider species mentioned in recent literature.

Regional Resources:

Washington Spider Checklist (1988)
http://www.tardigrade.org/natives/crawford/index.html

Spiders of the Arid Southwest
http://taipan.nmsu.edu/people/richman/southwest.htm

Spiders of Texas
http://pecanspiders.tamu.edu/spidersoftexas.htm

Colorado Spider Survey
http://www.dmns.org/main/minisites/spiders/index.html

Ohio Spider Survey
http://www.marion.ohio-state.edu/spiderweb/mainpage.htm

Los Angeles Spider Survey
http://www.phorid.net/spiders/index.htm

Medically Important Spiders:

The Hobo Spider Web Page
http://www.hobospider.org/
Important: Photos on this page are not intended for identification! Although becoming slightly out of date, this page created by the late Darwin Vest and maintained by his family is still one of the most accurate sources on medically important spiders, especially the hobo spider. In December, 2002 I analyzed the first 50 sites found by a search engine with the phrase "spider bites." All were well intentioned and seemingly informative, but all but seven contained serious misinformation, some of it potentially dangerous!

University of California Hobo Spider Page
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7488.html
Although not as extensive, this page contains some more recent information on the hobo spider, which has not been found in California.

Nina Sandlin's Brown Recluse Page
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/site/free/hlsa0805.htm
This article from the American Medical Association is the sole fully accurate general brown recluse information resource I know of. Most of the others are so bad they make me cringe!

eMedicine's Atrax Page
http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic548.htm
A fully authoritative medical account of Australian "funnel-web" envenomation, countering much of the hype on these spiders.

Spider Myths:

Rick Vetter's Spider Pages
     http://spiders.ucr.edu/index.html (includes the following:)
          http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html (the "venomous daddy-longlegs" myth)
          http://spiders.ucr.edu/debunk.html (the "blush spider" myth)
          http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html (the "brown recluse" myth)

Urban Legends about Spiders from about.com
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/spiders/index.htm
Several urban legends sites include spider material, but the above (compiled from other sites including www.snopes.com) is the most complete. What's more, they finally stopped calling spiders insects!

Camel Spider myths debunked by National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0629_040629_camelspider.html

Screaming Banana Spider Spoof
http://www.hawksinger.net/info/bananaspider.html
This entertaining spoof is not a real myth! It lampoons the type of hoaxes widespread on the Internet. Pay attention to what you read!

Photo Sources:

Markku Savela's biological images (mainly from Finland)
http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/sci/bio/life/intro.html

Shaun Ivory's Spider Page
http://www.ivory.org/spiders/index.html

Manuel J. Cabrero's "Pequeña Fauna de Zamora"
http://www.terra.es/personal/sara2111/home.htm

R&C Photography (tarantula)
http://www.rcphoto.com/index.shtml

Australian CSIRO image pages
http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/ (copyright images)
http://www.ento.csiro.au/aicn/system/system.htm (some free)

Vanderbilt University Bioimages
http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/frame.htm

Other photos are used courtesy of the photographers (who retain all rights), as credited. The spider trap photo is courtesy of hobospider.com (not a recommended info source). The photos by Bob Thomson were given by him to Rod Crawford (author of this page); the J.W. Thompson Co. photo of a yellow flower spider, and the Margaret Davidson drawing of a hobo spider, belong to the Burke Museum. A few drawings are by the author, but most are adapted from public domain sources, either non-copyright or copyright expired. Many of the line drawings are by classic arachnologist James Henry Emerton (1847-1930) in his late 19th century works on New England spiders. The green and white Leucauge in the page logo is from the 1893 masterpiece "American Spiders and their Spinningwork" by Henry C. McCook (1837-1911).

About (and by) the Author:

Author's Vita
http://expertise.cos.com/cgi-bin/exp.cgi?id=410605

Spider Collector's Journal
http://crawford.tardigrade.net/journal/index.html