Tarantulas of the south west USA

[joshuai]

Is there any range maps for the different sp. of tarantulas for the south west particularly southern California? Thanks!

[joshuai]

there was a thread with a distribution map does any one know what thread that was?

[AR-Tarantula]

Andrew Smith's (1995) publication on the tarantulas of the U.S and Mexico maps localities for most Aphonoplema species known up to that date. I have found that publication to often be geographically inaccurate, however. Below is a list of the species described from California with what little distributional information is available (typically just generalized locations of type localities). Most all of these species were described from very few individuals collected from very few locations so no robust maps of occurrence really exist. Also, be forewarned, most of these species are taxonomically bogus as well. The work of Tom Prentice (in Journal of Arachnology) provides good distributional information for the species he has described from California.

Aphonopelma of California

A. brunnium
Jasper Ridge, 3 miles west of Stanford University.

A. chamberlini
Camp Roberts, near Paso Robles, California.

A. chambersi
Garner Valley, southern California.

A. clarum
In mountains near Claremont, California.

A. cratium
Sierra Madre, near Los Angeles.

A. cryptethum
Los Angeles, California.

A. eutylenum
East of San Diego, California.

A. joshua
“Covington Flats area of Joshua Tree National Monument.”

A. iodium
“Common throughout the Mojave Desert west of the Colorado River, its distribution continuous to the north into the Great Basin in Utah and Nevada. Its distribution to the south and to the west of the Mojave Desert and to the northern-most limits in Nevada and Utah has not yet been determined.”

A. iviei
Death Valley.

A. mojave
Found throughout the Mojave Desert except in certain regions of south-central Nevada.

A. marxi
San Bernadino Mountians.

A. phanus
West of Palm Springs, California.

A. radinum
Southwest of Palm Springs, California.

A. reversum
Northeast of San Diego, California.

A. rileyi
North of Santa Barbara, California.

A. sandersoni
San Bernadino Mountains.

A. sullivani
Near Mecca, California.

A. smithi
Northeast of San Lucas, California and southwest of Patterson, California.