Southern Black Widow

The southern black widow, Latrodectus mactans, is a spider of the family Theridiidae found in the southeastern United States as far north as Ohio and as far west as Texas, as well as in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and the Hawaiian Islands. Mature females measure 8 to 13 millimeters in body length, shiny black, with a red hourglass-shaped marking on the underside of the abdomen. Only mature females can envenomate humans, injecting alpha-latrotoxin, but deaths in healthy adults are exceedingly rare despite roughly 2,000 recorded bites each year in the United States.