Steppe Spider

• GeneralIt has 13 red spots on its abdomen; it occurs in Spain but is very unaggressive.
• Historically it caused outbreaks of latrodectism among harvesters in Spain, Italy and the Balkans, when hand reaping coincided with the peak abundance of the females.
• Only the adult female can bite effectively: the male is minute and his chelicerae cannot pierce human skin.
• A specific antivenom exists, and with treatment the outlook is good.
• It is the European black widow, and it is identified by the thirteen red spots on its back that give it its name.
• Its bites have historically been an agricultural occupational problem: in southern Russia, Spain and Italy, waves of cases were documented among reapers and day labourers, who worked at ground level exactly where it weaves.
• From that association comes tarantism, the southern Italian phenomenon in which bitten people danced for days to the sound of the tarantella to cure themselves. Today it is attributed to this spider and not to the tarantula, which is harmless and was blamed in error.
• Its venom is the same type of latrotoxin as that of the other widows and produces the same picture of spasms and intense pain.
• Antivenom exists and deaths are exceptional.
• In Spain it is very scarce and tied to little-disturbed steppe environments.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (arachnid)

Habitat & environment

Cereal steppe, field banks and dry farmland

Sources consulted: Vetter e Isbister (2008), Annual Review of Entomology; Fauna Ibérica; Lucchesi, trabajos sobre tarantismo

Best time: Summer, when the adult females occupy their webs on field banks