News, Brown Recluse Spider: Range Could Expand in N. America With Changing Climate.
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If you live in Western NY you were not bitten by a brown recluse. I'm an entomologist and worked for many years in California, where people were always claiming they saw or were bitten by brown recluses, which don't occur, there either. There is a related spider in parts of southeastern CA and Arizona but it doesn't cause the necrosis at the bite site like the brown recluse of the Ozarks and nearby southern and Plains areas.
Here is an article by the University of Kentucky with a map showing the range of the brown recluse:
I don't know if climate change is affecting the range of this spider, but it seems to have definitely increased the range of a number of mosquito species in the US, some of which carry dengue fever, which is a tropical disease that wasn't found in the US until the mosquitoes that carry it spread north. The same has happened in parts of Europe where several zoonotic diseases (diseases of animals that can spread to humans) that used to only occur in northern Africa are now found in the Mediterranean parts of Europe.
According to our Dept. of Agriculture, they are in Western NY state. We are much colder.