A male walking on a tree
At night in Ecuador in 2018, we photographed an adult male walking on a tree. Its abdominal stripe had an irregular, almost zigzag form. We provisionally identified it as Avicularia hirschii, but no specimen examination followed.
Livestream: birdspidersCH fieldtrip stories from Ecuador, including provisional Avicularia hirschii observations. Identification remains provisional; no specimen was examined.
A juvenile in a silk retreat
A second encounter produced a juvenile in a silk retreat at another place. The pale abdomen carried a dark central marking. Other young Avicularia occurred in the wider area, which made a photograph-only identification especially difficult.
Why both names remain provisional
The World Spider Catalog accepts Avicularia hirschii Bullmer, Thierer-Lutz & Schmidt, 2006 from Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil [1]. Male and female material are known. Fukushima and Bertani redescribed the species in 2017 and also described A. lynnae from male material [2]. The characters in that revision, not color alone, are the standard for identification.
Enclosure design is a separate question. Our Avicularia cross-ventilation article describes the keeper method we use.
A separate Avicularia avicularia photograph on this site carries an unverified locality label; see that review on its own page.
The two spiders and their habitat
Continue exploring
References
- [1] World Spider Catalog (2026). World Spider Catalog, version 27. Natural History Museum Bern. Avicularia hirschii species record. doi:10.24436/2.
- [2] Fukushima, C. S. & Bertani, R. (2017). Taxonomic revision and cladistic analysis of Avicularia, with description of three new aviculariine genera. ZooKeys 659: 1-185. doi:10.3897/zookeys.659.10717.
