Know Your Enemy
Accurate identification of pests is as important as choosing the best preventive pest management available on the market today. Preventive Pest Control has compiled a list of most common pests to help you identify the problem.
Common House Spider
(Parasteatoda tepidariorum)
Characteristics
• Females are 1/5 to 1/4 inch in length
• Males are 7/50 to 19/100 inch in length
• Females have a yellowish to brown carapace and grey to brown abdomen
• Males have orange legs
Habitat
The common house spider is known throughout the world and are regular guests of houses and barns. These spiders can create their webs in the corners of walls, windows, door screens, floor joists, etc. in crawl spaces, basements and attics. Expect to find multiple irregular, tangled webs in different places set by these spiders since they usually abandon their cobwebs to create new ones.
Behavior
These spiders prefer to live near their own species and will create webs near each other. However, the female common house spider may find it difficult to live near another female. So when the two female common house spiders meet, the other may just become a prey to the stronger, more aggressive one. Males and females can share a single web for a long time without cannibalizing the male.
Food
This spider can consume different types of prey that includes cockroaches, scorpions, spiders, and other small vertebrates. To be able to consume their prey, they create effective traps with the use of creating an irregular network of threads with some sticky lump of liquid silk at the lowermost part of the web that allows them to trap their prey. Once a victim is trapped in the web, the spider will put more silk and further immobilize their prey by biting it. The venom will then paralyze their prey or may kill it, then the spider will consume their victim.
Life Cycle
The common house spider is found, any time of the year, and can produce eggs at any given season. The females are known to live with the males, even after they mature, which allows mating to be much easier. Once the female have eggs, she will place them in an egg sacand hang it on the web. Each egg sac may contain 100 to 500 eggs with some eggs to be unfertilized. The unfertilized eggs will be the food of the spiderlings while they are still inside the sac. Adult females are known to live for more than a year while the males will die soon after mating.
Other Information and Tips
The common house spider does not pose danger to people and pets. Although most individuals are scared of seeing them because of misidentification to the brown widow. However, this spider does not have that red hourglass marking as the brown widow, which makes them different.
There are no reports as well that these spiders bites, even if there is a common house spider infestation in homes. Since they can easily create messy, multiple webs, it is important to spider proof your home by regularly vacuuming areas where these spiders are seen.
Photo: Parasteatoda tepidariorum - Common House Spider by Fyn Kynd, used under CC BY 2.0 / resized from original