Brown Widow Spiders May Be Spreading Throughout Louisiana

SHREVEPORT, La. — Since hitching a ride to Florida — scientists believe sometime around the 1920s — the brown widow spider, a South Africa native, has slowly been showing its hour-glass figure in other parts of the country.

South Louisiana recently has been a hotbed of procreation for this venous, smaller and less aggressive cousin of the black widow.

 "They have an affinity for man-made structures, especially those that are not going to be disturbed. And in New Orleans, we have a lot of prime habitat since Katrina," said Dr. Ken Brown, research entomologist for the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board. "We think it got to Louisiana around 2002 and probably in the same manner it's been imported to other parts of the globe; in shipments, transport of cargo and the like."

Brown and others believe it won't be long before the spider finds its way to other parts of Louisiana.

"It could be here as soon as yesterday," said arachnologist Sam Marshall, an assistant professor in the biology department at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches. "Like other exotics that like to live around people, it moves when people move."

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