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Yesterday I've encountered the pictured spider in my home in Austria, Europe. The colors are pretty accurate in the picture, the head was striped brown/beige and black, the legs were multicolored with a subtle pattern and the back relatively black. enter image description here

The body had a length of around 2.5 cm, with legs extended the spider occupied an area roughly the same as a circle with a diameter of 5 cm.

After catching it with a glass it repeatedly lifted its front legs and whole body, but after some time calmed down, pulled the legs towards the body and lowered the body to the ground, kind of like as it was lying down.

My inital research led me to the conclusion that it might be a Tegenaria atrica. Is this correct?

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    $\begingroup$ I wouldn't think Tegenaria; this looks like a Wolf Spider. Unfortunately, I'm not a European Wolf Spider guy, so here are a couple of sites that might help you get an ID: ednieuw.home.xs4all.nl/Spiders/spidhome.htm jorgenlissner.dk/default.aspx $\endgroup$
    – John Robinson
    Aug 9, 2021 at 20:35
  • $\begingroup$ @JohnRobinson: Thanks for the excellent links, I am also inclined to think it might be some genera of wolf spider after consulting the pages. $\endgroup$
    – pat3d3r
    Aug 10, 2021 at 21:02

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This is a wolf spider. It is not Tegenaria because you would see long spinnerets at the back end of the abdomen, and the legs would not have splotchy black marks, but instead have bands of dark annulations throughout the length of the legs.

Zooming in, you can see the lycosidae eyes that are diagnostic of wolf spiders. These are the two eyes that are on top of the head.

The two dark bands down the carapace are common in a number of genera of wolf spiders, but the faint radial lines that can be seen within the dark bands and the dark eye-shaped mark in the centre of the abdomen is reminiscent of the Hogna genus (although it can be found in other Wolf spider genera as well).

Here is a gallery of Hogna for you to compare: https://bugguide.net/node/view/3381/bgimage?from=72

Unfortunately, distributions of the Lycosidae genera are hard to describe in Europe because the jurisdictional countries are relatively small geographic areas. But we can use iNaturalist to look at the user-submitted photos (and community-decided Identifications) of Wolf spiders in Austria here: https://inaturalist.ca/observations?place_id=8057&subview=map&taxon_id=47416&view=species and it shows that the most common wolf spiders seen and identified there is Hogna radiata.

And here is a gallery of user-submitted photos of Hogna radiata observed in Austria: https://inaturalist.ca/observations?place_id=8057&taxon_id=326871

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  • $\begingroup$ Wow, thanks for the extensive information and the links! $\endgroup$
    – pat3d3r
    Sep 12, 2021 at 10:56

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