Endangered
Kauaʻi cave wolf spider
Adelocosa anops
Kauaʻi cave wolf spider is a spider in the family Lycosidae (order Araneae) — Adelocosa anops, recorded as Endangered and tied to United States.
Appearance
It has a reddish brown to orange carapace with a pale abdomen and bright orange legs.
Adult Kauaʻi cave wolf spiders typically measure between 12.7 and 19.0 millimeters (0.5-0.75 inches) in length.
Range and habitat
Since they can die of desiccation in low humidity, the Kauaʻi cave wolf spider requires a high humidity habitat. Because of this, they prefer to inhabit the dark and stagnant air zones of caves. The Kauaʻi cave wolf spider is only found in the Koloa Basin of the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi.
The Kauaʻi cave wolf spider is only known to occur in a few caves in a lava flow with an area of 10.5 km2 (4.1 sq mi) in the Kōloa–Poʻipū region of Kauaʻi, Hawaiian Islands, and only six populations are known to exist.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Female Kauaʻi cave wolf spiders carry their egg sacs on their backs until their spiderlings hatch in 30 to 50 days. The female carries the egg sac in her mouthparts until the spiderlings hatch.
One of its primary prey species is the Kauaʻi cave amphipod, Spelaeorchestia koloana, that is only known from nine populations and reaches about 10 mm (0.4 in) in length.
In crisis
The Kauaʻi cave wolf spider was first listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2000, after being proposed to be listed in 1997. Three 5-year reviews have been filed mentioning the Kauaʻi cave wolf spider in 2005, 2015, and 2020 that have considered the spider to still be endangered. The Kauaʻi cave wolf spider is threatened by habitat modification, novel competition, and chemical runoff.
This also allows novel species like the introduced brown violin spider to enter, that is known to outcompete with the native Kauaʻi cave wolf spider for prey. A recovery plan published in 2006 stated that the Kauaʻi cave wolf spider would be delisted as endangered when 12 populations of the spider are observed to have the following conditions: stable, self-sustaining, protected from human interference, and its habitat being utilized in a manner conducive to conservation.
Kauaʻi cave wolf spider is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Kauaʻi cave wolf spider, Wikidata item Q305594. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
