Adventures in Spider Misidentification: Tegeneria not

Mystery Basement Spider

Although we have a caveat in the sidebar (HBG Names & Claims) about the ids on this blog and our openness to suggested corrections, we've had few alternative hypotheses offered. Ted MacRae and Matthias Buck helped on occasion, but I can't think of any others offhand. Such an absence of feedback can lead to a sense of complacency and a mistaken feeling that one knows what one is doing.

Tegenaria not!

Last December I had a post on what was afoot in the basement wherein I featured a picture of what I thought was an immature Barn/Sink/Basement Funnel Weaver Spider Tegenaria domestica. I arrived at this conclusion because I knew we've had the spider in its funnel webs in the basement for years and after consulting the information on BugGuide, I decided it was close enough and what else could it be anyway? But fortunately, last week John Sloan discovered the HBG and was good enough to tell me that I was probably wrong.

Not an upside-down Funnel Weaver

To John, the legs didn't look right but were reminiscent (e.g. here) of a family of spiders not known to be in Alberta: the Pimoidae. This spider family is on the West Coast and our guest room in the basement has hosted many visits by West Coast relatives and scientists - so colonization by suitcase is well within the realm of possibilities. I think the match looks good, both the habitus of the spider and the upside-down habit in the web, but as John pointed out Pimoidae is close to the Linyphiidae - a family of mostly tiny spiders that is very diverse in Alberta.

Pimoa or Linyphiidae: Lepthyphantes cf nebulosus

Our Mystery Basement Spiders are only about 4-5 mm long (chelicerae to spinnerets) at the moment and probably just juveniles. We'll be hoping that some make it to adults so that we can send them to John for a more authoritative identification. But wait - there is more! John has offered several other corrections to past posts and I have updated those posts and will be sharing more Adventures in Spider Misidentification with you in the future. Everyone is invited to join in and help (mis)identify a spider.

UPDATE: Thanks to Alberta Bugs, Robin Leech, and ultimately and authoritatively, Don Buckle - we have a winner: definitely Linyphiidae and most likely Megalepthyphantes (Lepthyphantes) nebulosus - a spider that likes people (synanthrope).