I bought a wine barrel on craigslist and left it in my car overnight. This (dead) spider fell out when I unloaded the barrel. There's a big honkin' eggsac under the barrel, which I haven't touched since.
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Not sure about the species, but it certainly looks like Steatoda to me.
The "Citroen" type chevron markings showed up on several online images of "grossa."
I figured you'd have a better chance of identifying this one than I would. We apparently don't own a single spider book.
Hey -- you want the egg sac? Cause I sure don't.
Hah, no, I have enough Steatoda around my house as it is. There actually aren't any really good guides to spider species that I know of. The little Golden Guide is actually a great intro to families and a few genera, and Spiders of North America is a big technical manual to all the genera on the continent, but I haven't found a good reference to spider species. Steve Lew at Cal has a nice checklist of spider species in California, though (seems to be down right now but here's the link: www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stevelew/soc.html). That's a good starting place if you're jonesin' for a species.
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