Giant House Spider

Fascinating facts about the Giant House Spider

• Eratigena duellica belongs to the group of spiders that build characteristic sheet-like webs with a narrow retreat, known as funnel-weavers. This places it firmly within the family Agelenidae, which gathers all spiders that use that distinctive hunting architecture. Its close relatives, such as E. saeva, are also members of this same family, sharing the same web-building style.
• Originally from Europe, the giant house spider now occurs in North America. It has been recorded in British Columbia, Canada, and in the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon.
• The close relatives E. saeva share its common name. Both of those species are also called giant house spiders, highlighting the naming overlap within the group.
• Until 2018 this spider was treated as the same species as Eratigena atrica. That year it was restored as a separate species, along with E. saeva, based on small but consistent morphological differences.
• In 2013 the broad-sense Eratigena atrica was moved out of the genus Tegenaria. The later 2018 revision then restored E. atrica as separate species.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Giant House Spider

In the shadowy recesses of our homes, a most unlikely giant roams, its legs a blur as it navigates the intricate network of walls and ceilings with an uncanny agility. The Giant House Spider, a master weaver of intricate webs, moves with a deliberate slowness, its eyes watching and waiting for the unsuspecting fly to stumble into its snare. As it glides effortlessly across the dusty terrain, its impressive leg span casts long, ominous shadows, a testament to the quiet, unassuming power of this eight-legged monarch of the domestic domain.

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