Entomologist Rick Vetter is enjoying his retirement. The extra time allows him to pursue spider research free from the distraction of what he considers the less fascinating six-legged species that most of his colleagues study. Vetter understands that not everyone shares his passion for eight-legged creatures. But he was surprised to learn that some entomologists...
People who research insects for a living are just like us — totally creeped out by spiders. This is the finding of a paper that earned retired UC Riverside spider expert Richard Vetter a 2020 Ig Nobel Award. Rick Vetter, retired entomology research associate and spider expert. His research interests include the psychological effects that...
[Reblog from Pests in the Urban Landscape] If you were to ask an audience of more than a few people if they or anyone they know has ever seen or been bitten by a brown recluse spider in California, many hands would be raised. This is quite remarkable because the brown recluse spider has NEVER...
This website presents evidence for the lack of brown recluse spiders as part of the Californian spider fauna. Unfortunately, this contradicts what most Californians believe; beliefs that are born out of media-driven hyperbole and erroneous, anxiety-filled public hearsay which is further compounded by medical misdiagnoses. Although people are free to disagree, this opinion has come...
The Situation: The brown widow spider, Latrodectus geometricus, became established in Southern California in early 2000 and has become well entrenched as part of the local spider fauna in urban Los Angeles and San Diego. The brown widow spider is continuing its expansion in Southern California and could possibly move northward into Central California. The...
J. Med. Entomol. 49(4): 947Ð951 (2012); DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1603/ME11285 ABSTRACT The brown widow spider, Latrodectus geometricus C. L. Koch, has become newly established in southern California during the first decade of the 21st century. Brown widows and egg sacs were collected within the urban Los Angeles Basin using timed searches. We also collected and compared the...
The article that was previously posted here was written in 1998 and is now outdated. Interested readers should seek out the following articles, which are more current. They are listed by the topics they cover so that you may only need to seek out one article. PDFs are available from the author at rick.vetter@ucr.edu Updated...
