Zoropsis up close – submitted photo
If you see a large brown spider lurking about your house, don’t squish it – mail it.
That’s the word from California Academy of Sciences entomologist Darrell Ubick, following a couple of unconfirmed local reports that an invasive arachnid called Zoropsis spinimana had been sighted in Sonoma Valley.
“There was one from Marin, but the specimen vanished and that one can now also be considered unconfirmed,” Ubick said Thursday. “The species is well established in Santa Clara Valley and has expanded to the middle of the San Mateo peninsula, Oakland-Berkeley, and Morgan Hill.”
A relative of the wolf spider, but with a harmless bite, the brown and black Zoropsis has a leg span of up to 1-1/4 inches, and an oval – not round – body. It originated in the Mediterranean but first appeared in the Bay Area in the mid-1990s.
“The best thing for somebody to do when coming across one is to capture it and send it to me,” Ubick said. “[The] second best is to take a digital image and send that, but as we have no specimens from the North Bay the first option is best for now.” Ubick can be reached at dubick@calacademy.org.
