Lexic.us

Definition of Latrodectus

1. Noun. Venomous spiders.

Medical Definition of Latrodectus

1. A genus of relatively small spiders, the widow spiders, capable of inflicting highly poisonous, neurotoxic, painful bites; they are responsible, along with Loxosceles (the brown spider), for most of the severe reactions from spider envenomation. Medically important species are known from Australia, North and South America, South Africa, and New Zealand. Some venomous species, in addition to Latrodectus mactans (the black widow spider), are Latrodectus bishopi (the red-legged widow spider), Latrodectus euracaviensis, Latrodectus geometricus, and Latrodectus tredecimguttatus. Origin: L. Latro, servant, robber, + G. Dektes, a biter Latrodectus mactans, the black widow spider, a venomous jet-black spider found in protected dark places; it is especially common in the southern U.S.; the full grown female (slightly more than 1 cm long) has a brilliant red dumbbell-or hourglass-shaped mark on the ventral aspect of the abdomen, and her bite may be extremely painful, producing a syndrome mimicking an acute abdominal crisis; some deaths, though rare, have been reported, particularly in small children; the male spider lacks the hourglass mark and is not venomous. (05 Mar 2000)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Latrodectus

Literary usage of Latrodectus

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. Denizens of the Desert: A Book of Southwestern Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles by Edmund Carroll Jaeger (1922)
"The American Latrodectus is quite generally known on sight by the Southwestern Indians, ... Latrodectus is one of our few spiders with a purely black body. ..."

2. New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies: Papers by Many Writers by Edward Pollock Anschutz (1917)
"as we were before; but it seems to us, after analyzing the evidence, that it must at least be admitted that certain spiders of the genus Latrodectus have ..."

3. Psyche by Cambridge Entomological Club (1893)
"... a catalogue of Hymenoptera; strange egg of a Reduviid; Marx's American spiders; Latrodectus ... Latrodectus ..."

4. Poisons: their effects and detection by Alexander Wynter Blyth (1895)
"... the only species, however, of which we have any definite information relative to their poisonous properties, are Lycosa tarantula and the Latrodectus ..."

5. The Spider Book: A Manual for the Study of the Spiders and Their Near by John Henry Comstock (1912)
"Latrodectus Fig. 360. Latrodectus MACTANS. FEMALE MACTANS, MALE of much coarser silk; in fact its web can be recognized, in most cases, at a glance by the ..."

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