Illawarra wisharti

Illawarra wisharti, the Illawarra funnel-web spider, is a species of Australian funnel-web spider and the only member of the monotypic genus Illawarra, both of which were first described by Michael R. Gray in 2010. It has so far been found only in the Illawarra region of southern New South Wales, which gave the genus its name, and the species name honours Graeme Wishart, who collected many mygalomorph spiders there. Mature males are about 15 millimetres long and mostly brown with narrow chevrons on the abdomen, and females look similar and are said to have an ant-like smell. Males carry a broad row of spines under the tarsi of all four pairs of legs, which separates them from other atracid spiders. It is a fossorial species that lives in burrows under leaf litter and rocks. Its venom resembles that of Atrax robustus, a species that has caused dangerous envenomation in humans, but it is not one of the six atracine species listed as dangerous.