Male Spider with Brass-Colored Abdomen
I found this little spider (body length was only 3 or 4 millimeters) on the wall near our front door on June 11, 2015. From the enlarged pedipalps, I’m pretty sure it was a male.
His abdomen looks metallic, which is kind of unusual for a spider. The black-and-white pattern on his front legs is also fairly distinctive.
I think he looks a lot like Phrurotimpus borealis, which appears to occur pretty much all along the US/Canada border.
Although, the Bugguide page for the Phrurotimpus genus says “The genus is in moderate disarray, and is in need of revision. Numerous undescribed species can be found in most major museum collections.” So, this could easily be one of the undescribed species that they mention. At any rate, these are members of a small family of little spiders that are distinct from the more well-known spider families.
Anyway, the females are bigger and less colorful, and would probably stay with their webs, and so aren’t as likely to be found crawling around on the house. However, their eggs are evidently pretty conspicuous, resembling drops of blood on the underside of stones.
(so if you think you are getting blood from a stone, check again, it might just be spider eggs).
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