July 2005 OutdoorIllinois / 17

Story By Joe McFarlandPhotos By Adele Hodde

The brown recluse is knowneverywhere. But it doesn’t live

everywhere. One Illinoisresearcher is documenting the

range of one of the mostnotorious spiders in Illinois.

One quiet evening afterworking on a violin in hisstudio, northeastern Illi-nois luthier Jay Dammglanced up and noticed a

tiny distraction in his light source.There, crumpled in a post-mortem sil-

houette, was the familiar outline of abrown recluse spider—also known asthe violin spider. Setting aside his tools,Damm climbed onto a chair and

ness near Chicago, the namesake spi-ders vanished from sight.According to one researcher, the

known distribution of brown recluse spi-ders in Illinois seems to match suchobservations.“The middle of Illinois tends to be

the northernmost limit of their range,”explained Ken Cramer, a MonmouthCollege professor of biology who’sbeen studying the brown recluse since2002. Cramer noticed that relatively lit-tle was known about the Illinois distrib-ution of this otherwise high-profile spi-

MakingSpiderSense

unscrewed the glass fixture to removethe dried remains.“I’d never seen one in northern Illinois

before,” the outdoorsman observed. “Iguess it’s appropriate that the first one Isee shows up in a violin shop.”The violin spider, a.k.a brown

recluse—Loxosceles reclusa—had beena common sight for Damm when helived downstate during the 80s. Duringhis college days in southern Illinois,Damm routinely encountered the infa-mous spiders, whose venom can causenecrotic lesions for unfortunate victims.But when he returned to northern Illi-

nois, eventually opening his luthier busi-

(Photo By

JoeMcF

arland)

18 / OutdoorIllinois July 2005

der, and so he decided to undertake astudy himself.“For a spider that’s so well docu-

mented, especially within the medicalcommunity, there’s a lot that isn’t knownabout the brown recluse,” Cramerexplained. “There’s just a handful ofresearchers doing specialty work (withthe medical aspect). But there’s not a lotof people doing studies in the wild.”Cramer, along with a spider expert

from the University of California, beganthe Bi-State Brown Recluse Project, anongoing study whose mission is to webtogether the facts about brown reclusespiders in Illinois and Iowa. Sorting outfact from fiction, however, becomesproblematic.The problem is, everyone has a story

to tell about spiders. That’s one of theproblems. Determining the distribution ofspiders based on reported sightings orsuspected bite victims—which is whateverybody has done for years unofficial-ly—is unreliable and unscientific,Cramer contended.“Diabetic ulcers and staph infections

are commonly misdiagnosed as spiderbites,” Cramer said. “And when peoplereport multiple bites...those rarely comefrom a brown recluse.

much cold can they endure? Does tem-perature limit their range?Under controlled environments,

Cramer already determined brownrecluse spiders can survive for extensiveperiods without even a drop of water.Future tests will determine if the spiderscan locate food by smell, and whetherlive or dead prey makes a difference.What’s not entirely clear is why the

spiders haven’t become well establishedin the northern parts of the state.“They don’t ‘balloon’ webs as a

means of dispersal,” Cramer pointedout, describing the ingenious method oftransportation employed by some spiderspecies, where a filamentous “kite” ofweb carries vagabond arachnids milesfrom home on the whims of air current.

“It’s highly unlikely you’re going to bebitten by a brown recluse,” theresearcher pointed out. “It’s even moreunlikely you’ll be bitten twice.”Since so few of us can positively

identify a brown recluse spider, Crameroffers a list of facts about the spider onhis website (see address at the end ofthis story).He encourages people to send him

brown recluse spiders for study, especial-ly specimens from northern Illinois (any-one doing so should first verify their iden-tification through his website). Since theproject receives no official public funding,Cramer relies on this grassroots coopera-tion to further his understanding of thespider everybody knows but doesn’t.Some of the questions the study

poses: Where do brown recluse spiderslive in Illinois? What do they eat? How

Preserved for study, dozens of brown

recluse spiders from various spots in

Illinois await laboratory examination.

There is still much to learn about

brown recluse spiders, according to

Monmouth College researcher Kenneth

Cramer. The researcher is documenting

the Illinois distribution of these

distinctively marked spiders.

July 2005 OutdoorIllinois / 19

A brown recluse web, by comparison,is little more than a reckless arrange-ment of inconsequential threads in acorner; no prey is caught in its threads,and the spider merely uses the strandsfor climbing around its hiding place.Since brown recluse spiders relocate

themselves on foot, cold weather mightlimit the northern range of this species.In the wild, spiders must endure the win-ter cold. It’s therefore possible northernIllinois winters are cold enough to pro-hibit this spider from establishing itselfbeyond the occasional indoor hitchhik-er—those which might arrive in movingboxes or almost anything else shippedfrom a southern region.Since starting the project three

years ago, Cramer has receivedinquiries and samples from hundreds ofnervous individuals, many of them sim-ply wanting to know if the spider theysquashed in their living room was apotential threat.“I get a lot of wolf spiders and jump-

ing spiders,” Cramer said. “Wolf spiders

in particular, because they’re big, they’refast, they’re hairy. A brown reclusedoesn’t look nearly as threatening as awolf spider.”One of the ironies about the pres-

ence of brown recluse spiders in homesis the fact most homes in brown reclusecountry have at least a few of the spi-ders present—sometimes hundreds ofthem—but bites to humans are rare. Ahome in Kansas documented to havesome 2,000 brown recluse spiders with-in a span of 6 months proved harmlessfor spider-human cohabitation.

“Nobody in the house was bitten,” theresearcher reported.Does your house have brown recluse

spiders? If you live in southern Illinois,the spiders almost certainly live in oraround your house someplace. But therisk of a bite is typically quite minimal,especially if one uses caution whengrabbing dusty boxes in a shed, orworking in places where the spidersmight be hiding.And if you do find a brown recluse—

or think you’ve got one—Cramer wouldlike to add it to his collection.

Information about how to identify thespiders, as well as how to ship themto Cramer, can be obtained at: www.department.monm.edu/biology/recluse-project/identify.htm.

Brown recluse webs aren’t used for

catching prey; they’re actually random

threads, which the spider uses to move

around its living area (in this case, a

box, upper right). Cramer examines a

typical-size brown recluse (below).