Brief SummaryRead full entry Tegenaria agrestis, known in the
United States as the Hobo Spider, is native to Europe but is now
well established in the Pacific Northwest of the United States
and spreading eastward (Baird and Stoltz 2002). Hobo Spiders are
medium-sized brown spiders that build funnel webs and resemble
many other agelinid spiders. Beginning in the late 1980s, the
claim was made that this spider was responsible for necrotic
skin lesions seen in the Pacific Northwest that had previously
been attributed (without justification) to the Brown Recluse
(Loxosceles reclusa) (Vest 1987a,b; Vest et al. 1996), although
the Brown Recluse (the bites of which can indeed produce
necrotic skin lesions) is absent from or extremely rare in the
Pacific Northwest (Vetter 2008). Although Brown Recluses clearly
cannot be responsible for the symptoms in question in this
region, the claim that Hobo Spider bites are instead responsible
has been seriously challenged (Binford 2001; Vetter and Isbister
2004, 2008; Gaver-Wai