Insect and Disease Identification Thread

I found this guy in the yard this morning. He/she is a beauty! What kind of spider it is? Keeper or goner?

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That looks like an Argiope aurantia,a non aggressive garden spider,but can bite if threatened,which is like a bee sting.bb

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Thank you Brady. It’s my first seeing this type of spider in my garden

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If you are brave enough to tap it with your finger it will shake its web back and forth, or a grass stem would probably work as well :wink:

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You are right. I saw a bumblebee was stuck on its web. I picked up a stick trying to free the bee. The web was vibrating after I got the bee free

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Found this on a young apple this evening. Never seen one before. About 3/4 - 1 inch. Quite striking. Sue

bug-whitebrown-back-gf

bug-brownwhite-side-gf

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Likely one of the Longhorn Beetles, family, Cerambycidae. I will search for a species match later.

Edit: Round-headed Apple Tree Borer

^ check out the Info and the Data tabs for range, feeding habits

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Does not sound like a good thing to have on an apple tree!

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It gets ridiculous at times killing 3-4 of these spiders per week. I took a picture of this one in the sink this morning.

. Earlier this year i woke up to one crawling over me while sleeping. I always shake out blankets, clothes etc. . Ive been spider bitten many times in my life and expect they will always be part of my life. They are hard to kill off completely. I grew up around kansas taruntula and brown recluse. Black Widow are more rare in this area. The widow is now a spider i see every year for the last 2 years. The tarantua i see rarely now but as a child saw 5-10 per week. Wolf spiders and brown recluse are the most common types in my location at this time.

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was at TSC sometime in july when i heard one of the girls there let out a scream. we went over and she was pointing at a huge black widow! almost the size of a 50cent piece! must have came in on cargo brought in from away. one of the sups. was there and he’s originally from louisiana. said it was the biggest one he’d ever seen. they sprayed it with hornet killer as no one dared try to catch it. good thing as someone bit up here would have to be lifeflighted to some where down south that had a antivenom for it. could have ended very badly.

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Clark
Go to Home Depot and buy one gallon of home defense and spray inside and outside perimeter of all the walls. All pests will leave your house for 6 six months and respray as needed.

Tony

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Clark, your spider in the sink looks like a Hobo.

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@SpokanePeach
Kevin,
Hobo look similar to brown recluse but in my area brown recluse look like that one What does a Brown Recluse spider look like? - identify brown recluse. Note the symbol in the head area (violen like). This is the spiders that are common here but does not contain every spider http://kansasecomeet.org/ecomeet/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Spiders-FINAL.pdf. hobo spiders are rare here but do exist https://www.kansashealthsystem.com/care/centers/poison-control-center/common-poisons/dangerous-spiders. As a child we lived in a house that attracted large tarantula ( some over 2") and since then ive only seen those type twice. They typically take down mice and live in wet areas. My old house set down in a valley and caught all the water from the surrounding hills which is unique and much to that larger spiders liking (not the common texas brown). Crawdads also lived there by the thousands. The pond was small but attracted huge amounts of wildlife. It was a paradise to rare species and i saw many of them there. My current house is on a hilltop and i do not typically see tarantula here but occasionally see one hunting in the fields in the afternoon (common texas brown). I bring up tarantula because the type i grew up around is extremely rare and unidentified.
We reportedly have 500 types of spiders in Kansas https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article330952/More-than-500-tarantula-breeds-found-in-Kansas.html. The brown recluse is hard to kill being virtually immune to poison. My friend who does pest control/removal for a living refers to them as challenging .
He targets their food supply if they have one other than each other. In my case i suspect they live in the undisturbed attic occasionally dropping in but sometimes more than others. Occasionally i see a wolf spider come in with the produce but no food source insects such as silver fish. Control of Brown Recluse Spiders - Insects in the City. I had a wolf spider infestation once because i had a cricket infestation. I sprayed the crickets and opened the door and the wolf spiders walked out to go pursue their food. Lets just say i saw no brown recluse because of the wolf spiders. Wolf spiders are in the yard numbering in the thousands at times. Here is a blow up of the brown recluse spider i killed


You might wonder how they get inside but it just takes someone stopping buy carrying a purse, coat etc. https://www.livescience.com/39996-brown-recluse-spiders.html. They can also come in with purchases eg. Bags of dogfood, bulk buys etc. .

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Wow. I’d call a professional exterminator if I had black widows and brown recluses inside my home.

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No black widows just brown recluse inside. Black widows cause me more fear than the recluse.
One of my sisters and i need to talk she had them as well recently. They are very common here. One of my sisters had an actual infestation of hundreds of them! We grew up around them and understand they are dangerous so we keep them killed down. Im not sure you will ever kill them completely in this area. They will move in a newly built barn in days. I live in an area where you better watch your back because nature makes the rules https://growingfruit.org/t/kansas-clothes-sorting-watch-your-back/23083. A guy i know was a plumber and went into a crawl space not far from here and got under there and heard rattling all around him. He barely got out alive past the snakes there were a dozen or more. I said how did you fix their water kill them all with a shotgun? He said oh no screw that i cut a hole in their floor and fixed it from the top. I bet he didnt leave that hole uncovered on his lunch break! The only neighbors who still live here like me grew up here. The people who move here from other areas do not stay. A couple moved here in their 70s next door and i helped them understand the place and grow things. They both passed away last year and others who grew up here moved in. The place has many blessings and curses that go with it. My life has been in Gods hands since the beginning and it will be in the end. Happy1 said it best about the bull snake "
Happy1

Jul 5

What a suprize, i don’t think i’ll have that problem living in Ohio."

Believe it or not my place is very well kept in comparison to most i know of in the area. I stopped by a neighbors one day and they were glad to see me and commented noone else was allowed inside because the recluse problem was so bad. There were thousands of some type of baby spider engrained in the couch (i assumed they were recluse and i moved from that seat and they chuckled). I felt tiny stings all over my body .
They killed them mostly back by the next time i went over there in a few weeks. The wife had a chunk missing from her hand from a recluse bite. The irony is she is now in her 90’s and outlived all the people worried about her. We must move all furniture and vacuum once a week disturbing ever corner of everything which is what i do and they hate that. I will call my friend the exterminator who will likely laugh and recommend moving! He moved from here because of the storms etc. .He came and helped me a few times with various things eg. Moving hay, gardening, killing wood ants in a shed etc. but always says “hey its just how it is here” .

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From what I’ve read,Brown Recluse have a nasty bite and powerful venom.
Here is a link to a photo I took of a Hobo spider.bb
https://growingfruit.org/t/one-of-the-few-nasties-in-western-washington/14293

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Have you ever considered a perimeter spray around the house with Taurus-SC(fipronil)?
It is labeled for brown recluse. I use it for carpenter ants here, works great. No crawling bugs in the house for a year from one spray.

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@J.D had not but i will look into that now. It sounds like a great idea! I use a termidor barrier now to ensure other things cannot come here. I also spray a perimeter border on the house and all sheds and barns. @Bradybb that is correct their venom is very powerful and where they bite chunks may rot away. My entire life Ive always run into them in some capacity frequently and i would rather not but there has not been an effective way to control them thus far. The people who burn wood have them in their firewood. Every place has something smog, hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, mud slides etc…Im fortunate to have grown up with the recluse and had them as a life long enemy.

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I think Taurus-SC is a generic version of termidor, both have 9.1% fipronil as an active ingredient.

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@J.D then the border is there already so no crickets etc can move in. They die when they cross it. Not true of the recluse they do not die from it. My ex sprayed one directly with insect killer from walmart in the can and captured him to observe and he never died in the next several hours. She took the jar off him later and stomped him. The recluse is actually not able to survive without hiding in places because wolf spiders, birds, lizards, snakes etc. eat them quickly outside. People like me are the problem. I manipulate the environment to make my survivol easier and my life longer and the recluse to realize what i do is in their favor.

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