Southern House Spider Facts & Information

What You Can Do

Preventing a southern house spider infestation begins with:

• Food restriction: The spiders’ food source should be kept to a minimum.

• Exclusion: Seal all holes, cracks, and gaps to help prevent entry.

• Cleaning: Removing ground litter that serves as harborage for spiders is also helpful.

What Orkin Does

Your local Orkin Pro is trained to help manage southern house spiders and similar pests. Since every building or home is different, your Orkin Pro will design a unique spider treatment program for your situation.

Orkin can provide the right solution to keep southern house spiders in their place…out of your home, or business.

Appearance

• Females: Females are charcoal gray and their body, including the leg span, is about 2 inches in diameter. Homeowners often report the females look like small tarantulas.

• Males: The male spider has long legs, but is smaller than the female and is khaki or amber in color. Males are mistakenly thought to be brown recluse spiders. Male southern house spiders are generally larger and the violin shape on their back is narrower than that of the brown recluse. Also, the southern house spider has eight eyes, while the brown recluse has only six eyes.

Geographic Range

Distribution of the southern house spider includes the southern states from the Atlantic Coast westward to New Mexico, Arizona, California, and northward into Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. In some parts of its distribution area, the arachnid is also known as the southern crevice spider.

Habitat

Southern house spiders are frequently associated with human habitations. They build their webs from cracks and crevices on the exterior of homes, barns, and other structures. This species can be found in yucca plants over the portion of their distribution where the yucca plant is found. Other preferred areas of protective habitat include under:

• Logs

• Loose tree bark

• Stones

Life Cycle & Reproduction

A mated female lays about 200 eggs, wrapping them loosely in a silken egg sac that is roughly in 5/8 inch in diameter. Southern house spiderlings are considered "social" arachnids since they exhibit sibling recognition, cooperate with each other to capture prey, feed socially, and disperse in aggregations after leaving their mother’s web.

Females may live up to eight years, but the lifespan of the male spider is much shorter.