For! You’re driving me crazy! There are no brown recluse spider populations in Orange County or California! No matter what the news articles say with all their hype, there are no experts in the field of entomology to tell you that this spider has established itself in California or Orange County. You see, the brown recluse is native to the southeast. It has only been seen in southern California in association with people and goods being transported from that area to California. Even with these findings, no populations of these spiders have been found here.
But there is one of the brown recluse relatives, a native of Southern California, who has started showing up in Orange County. There is also another close relative of the brown recluse that migrated from South America, specifically Chile, to Los Angeles County, but has yet to be seen in Orange County. The native species that has been seen in small groups is the desert recluse. This spider is primarily found in the deserts of southern California, primarily in the eastern parts of the state, but a few have appeared in southeastern Orange County near the hills area of the county. The desert recluse, the native spider, is found in foothills and desert areas. In their home areas, when you find one, you find a lot.
Recluses are generally found in cracks and crevices in and under rocks. They have greatly benefited from human-disturbed environments where they are easily found under trash cans, plywood, trapdoors or rubber tires, in boxes, etc. They are often found in association with humans and are therefore considered “household” spiders. In the Southeast, the brown recluse is often called a picture spider because it is often found behind pictures hanging on walls.
Several characteristics of these spiders is that in the right environment their populations are usually very dense. If you find one, there are more nearby. Unlike many other spiders that disperse either by migrating or being carried by air currents (called a balloon) when they are small, recluse spiders can only expand outside of their native range as a result of human intervention. As I said before, the few brown recluses that have been collected in Orange County are generally found in facilities that receive products from out of state or are involuntarily transported by people who have relocated from the Southeast.
Considering that brown recluse spider bites are not common in the Southeast, where they cohabit with people, it is clear that Orange County does not have sufficient populations of recluse spiders to be responsible for the number of cases or illnesses reported. they attribute to them. . All of these spiders have venom that is capable of causing skin lesions. The venom of the desert recluse spider is similar to that of the brown recluse and should be considered of equal potency.
The Chilean recluse, found in Los Angeles County, reportedly has a more potent poison than the others. The vast majority of bites from this type of spider heal very well without medical intervention. There is still no proven death from an inmate bite. While there are several highly probable deaths reported in children, these are extremely rare cases, about one every decade or so. But to this day no verified fragments of this spider have been reported in Orange County, California.
