The source page identifies the pictured tarantula as Aphonopelma mooreae but gives no sex or life stage. The source post also explains the central problem: the original species description was based on a male. The photograph does not show the mature male characters used there, so the identification should remain provisional.
What the catalog supports
The World Spider Catalog accepts Aphonopelma mooreae Smith, 1995 and records the species from Mexico. It does not list the United States in the accepted distribution. The original spelling was Aphonopelma moorei; the catalog records the later form mooreae. [1]
The page previously called it a North American “Blue Bottle Tarantula” and said that examined specimens were very likely this species. Neither the examiner nor diagnostic record was given. The common name and color may help people find the animal in hobby discussions. Metallic green or blue pubescence on the carapace and legs of both sexes, together with a home in the pine-oak woodlands of the northern Sierra Madre Occidental, is what Hendrixson uses to separate A. mooreae from A. bacadehuachi. [3] Those features narrow the identification, but only a mature male compared with Smith’s description confirms it.
What would verify the identification
A useful specimen record would include provenance, photographs after molts under comparable light, retained exuviae, and dates. A mature male could be compared with the characters in Smith’s description. A female identification would need evidence beyond the male-only original description.
Aphonopelma seemanni in Costa Rica offers a useful contrast: those spiders were identified in the field, and the article does not treat the photographs as a fresh taxonomic determination.
Numerical temperature and humidity advice is removed because it was not tied to a traceable species-specific source. Any future care section should be tied to a dated enclosure record and should not infer ownership or individual response from this page.
The Brachypelma auratum identification guide uses a diagnosis-led approach for a different Mexican genus; it does not identify the animal shown here.
References
- World Spider Catalog: Aphonopelma mooreae.
- Smith, A. M. (1995). Tarantula Spiders: Tarantulas of the U.S.A. and Mexico, cited in the World Spider Catalog as the original description.
- Hendrixson, B. E. (2019). A new species of Aphonopelma (Araneae: Mygalomorphae: Theraphosidae) from the Madrean pine-oak woodlands of northeastern Sonora, Mexico. Zootaxa 4688(4): 519–534.
