Seamus - so where exactly are brown recluse spiders found these days?
There is the range map on the website I linked to that's still very accurate, the species is not naturally found outside of that area... there is always a minimal possibility of individual animals being sent someplace else in produce shipments or in a box of crickets or on a moving van or... anything that goes from one area to the other... But it's such a minescule chance as to be virtually meaningless, being transported, then being encountered, then being crushed at the proper angle for incidental envenomation... the chances against it are astronomical. The difference between recluse and fireants is that fire ants have established viable, breeding populations outside their natural range, as of right now with the information I have avaliable, Brown recluse have not.
You sure about the bite of a recluse? Keith at
www.Chameleoncounters.com had a bite a few weeks ago. I was able to witness it (Keith being a good friend). It was not dry and produces alot of fluid. I'll post pics of it shortly
Did you see the spider itself prior to the envenomation or just the injury?
If you did happen to see it, how many eyes did it have?
Did he happen to smash the spider against himself (or himself against the spider)?
Recluse envenomations are misdiagnosed more often than they are properly diagnosed simply because of the somewhat foolish and inaccurate public "everyone knows" mentality about the nature of the bites and a bit of innocent ignorance about the basic physical construction of the spider...
The chelicerae (fangs) are fused in Loxoceles, the animal can't wiggle them around like a tarantula, they're essentially stuck in position, a position that doesn't allow them to strike at broad surfaces... with an average adult size of about 3/4" leg span being a bigger individual, and the body much smaller, this leaves them unable to manuver the chelicerae into any position that would be able to puncture human skin without their body being crushed and bent, forcing the "fangs" through the skin. Additionally, due to simple size, the envenomation from a recluse could barely be felt and the venom is reported to have virtually no pain associated with it immediately after envenomation (as opposed to Latrodectus, the other big scary spiders we've got in the U.S. which are also overblown but really do hurt) according to the verified and substantiated reports where the spider was identified as being the culprit by a qualified arachnidologist.
The necrotic effect of the venom is very much so a dry rot, it's not a big juicy fluid oozing mess, it's an evenly spreading area of fairly compact necrotic tissue with a narrow band of active rot... there's healthy tissue, there's a very small area of currently rotting tissue and there's the area where the tissue is essentially gone.
Recluse envenomations can be very easily treated by any competent doctor with a fairly simple nitro patch above the area of envenomation, halting the spread of the necrotic effect almost immediately and leaving only faint scarring... problem is, most necrotic effects are misdiagnosed and the treatments used for one cause won't work on certain others... a common treatment for years was O2 therapy, which would have no positive effect on a recluse enevenomation... but again, most of the diagnosed envenomations simply aren't factual.
There have been no substantiated and verified cases of humans being capable of having allergic reactions to spider venoms, it's possible of course, there are people allergic to sunshine or water... but it hasn't happened yet in a way that has been verified by competent doctors (Competent is a HUGE issue here, I wouldn't trust an arachnidologist to perform surgery and I don't trust doctors to diagnose envenomations, they simply don't have reliable education about the subject in most cases) however... plenty of people are allergic, to some degree or another to a whole host of insect venoms, plant toxins, secretions from microorganisms, household chemicals, amphibian secretions, reptile venoms, animal dander and hundreds of other things... many of which can produce really nasty effects if introduced into the bloodstream via any open wound (meaning papercuts).
I'm not going to say 100% that it isn't a recluse envenomation... I suppose it could have picked up a secondary infection to cause the fluid buildup... and I suppose that this person could have crushed the spider against themselves... and I suppose the doctor could (and most likely did) have proposed an improper treatment... But it's not too likely and unless the spider was seen in advance of the enevenomation and collected afterwards and the species verified by someone who can tell a recluse from a wolf or cellar spider (you'd be amazed at how many people can't), I'm going to remain skeptical and file this with most other "recluse envenomations" I've been told about.
It's really a matter of public education and the understanding of the masses, everyone knows someone who knows someone who's cousin's best friend's roommate from college's sister's boyfriend's auto mechanic's kid was envenomated by a recluse, usually hundreds of miles outside of the animals natural range and it usually was treated with antibiotics (which do nothing whatsoever except maybe help a bit with any possible secondary infections in actual envenomations)... The same way they all know someone similar only it was a burmese python that ate someone's kid or a rattler that killed an entire family while they were at a picnic.
Dr. Greene there, the one who wrote the very short piece in the third link above is online pretty frequently and is certainly a trustworthy source, right up there with Rick West (although for some reason I have gotten the impression that they don't get along or respect one another but I have no idea why I have that impression it's just a feeling) I'll email him a link to the thread... he might participate, he might not... I acknowledge fully that the recluse envenomations I've seen have been mostly in books, with only a few suspected envenomations in person (followed appropriate pathology and responded to treatment but the spider was not collected for identification) but those photos really don't look like any of the true envenomations that I've ever seen, they DO however look like a lot of misdiagnosed envenomations caused by insect bites/stings or lyme disease.
There's something of a larger issue here too... one that covers any animal capable of venom production and the public opinion that has grown up around them... the idea that somehow the animals are dangerous and need to be exterminated despite the backlash this has on the local ecology. Someone has a house full of wolf spiders and can't tell the difference between them and recluse... they are scared because of the stories they have heard and the occasional picture that shows up... They have the house fumigated multiple times to ensure the population is decimated. Much like any other predatory species, the spiders have a slower reproductive rate than their prey and don't bounce back from the fumigation as quickly, the house is over-run by true pest species that pose an actual health risk. It's very nearly identical to rattlesnake roundups, over the top extermination of a species simply because of inaccurate fears based in fantasy. I'm not a whiney tree hugging type who latches on to every "Save the Insert Species here!" campaign that comes along, but I do my research and try to reccognize legitimate and reasonable danger when it occurs and to differentiate that from superstition and misinformation before deciding on a course of action or response. In fact, after learning that L. reclusa had fused chelicerae, I was skeptical and had about forty of them sent from Missouri specifically to euthanize them and verify that this was in fact the case (it was in the first thirty I checked, after all of them were fused, I kept the remaining ten for a time as pets... but I've also kept leeches (Some really pretty Placobdella parasitica and P. ornata that I pulled off a batch of red eared sliders), so I might not be completely sane).
