Dear Charles,

Yet another request for additions to the dictionaries please:

In the last couple of days the staff at rECOrd have been contacted by a chap who had imported a Volkswagen car from the USA. He indicated that inside the car were 3 Black Widow spiders and a couple of egg cocoons. Yesterday he brought them in to the rECOrd office at Chester Zoo. The live female and egg cocoons have been sent to London Zoo and the remaining dead females are being sent to Liverpool Museum for the spirit collection.

As this animal is on the Dangerous Animals list one would have thought the potential importation of such would have been closely monitored, however, this seems not to be the case. The organisation which imported the car for the chap noted that they 'normally' fumigate the cars but had not done so in this instance. They also indicated that finding Black Widows in these imported cars was not an unusual occurrence. With climate change and taking into account the fact that Black Widows (Latrodectus sp.) occur in temperate climes there is surely a possibility that these could colonise in this country - not a good thing I would have thought.

Anyway, here at rECOrd we would like to be able to record this find (in Cheshire) both 'for the record' and also to be able to monitor the species should colonisation have begun to occur. Sadly there are no Latrodectus species available on the NBN Dictionary - neither in Recorder nor in the NBN online dictionary. Consequently, we cannot put the data in other than by creating a 'local' species entry - not something we normally like to do at all.

So, could I request that the following species are added to the dictionary (or at least considered by more knowledgeable arachnologists):

Southern Black Widow   -   Latrodectus mactans (Fabricius, 1775)   -   alternative Names: Hourglass Spider, Shoe-button Spider (the most common of the 3 Widows)
Northern Black Widow   -   Latrodectus variolus (Walckenaer, 1837)
Western Black Widow    -   Latrodectus hesperus Chamberlin & Ivie, 1935

Any other comments from other LRCs and recorders ? What are people's thoughts on recording such introduced species ?

Cheers and thanks

Steve