is found in eastern Australia from north-east Queensland to Victoria. The spiders have been introduced in New Zealand with Lampona murina residing in the North Island for over a hundred years while Lampona cylindrata has become widespread throughout the South Island since 1980. Habitat and behaviour They live in gardens and inside houses, beneath bark and rocks, in leaf litter and are often found in the folds of clothes, towels and shoes. They do not build webs. Most active at night, they hunt for other spiders. Their favoured prey is the black house spider (Badumna insignis) and the closely related brown house spider (Badumna longinqua), both of which, like the whitetail, are native to Australia but have been inadvertently introduced to New Zealand. Bites to humans A common perception is that white-tailed spider bites can be associated with long term skin infections, and in rarer cases progression to necrosis. This is an attribution of infections presenting to medical care with a complaint of "spider bite." Venom has no bacteria, and infections do not arise from spider bites. The well-described brown recluse bite causes direct damage to skin and tissue. It has a limited area and does not spread. No formal studies have found evidence for associating necrosis with White-tailed spider bites. White-tailed spider bites may cause a small red or discolored bump, similar to an insect bite, that burns or itches. The issue of necrosis in some bite cases in published studies begins with a paper presented at the International Society on Toxinology World Congress held in Brisbane in 1982. Both the White-tailed spider and the wolf spider were considered as candidates for possibly causing suspected spider bite necrosis in Australia. In Brazil the recluse spider was identified as linked to necrosis. Following this initial report, numerous other cases implicated white-tailed spiders in causing necrotic ulcers. All of these cases lacked a positively identified spider — or even a spider bite in some cases. Additionally, there had not been a case of arachnogenic necrosis reported in the two hundred years of European colonisation before these cases. Of the 130 cases of White-tailed spider bites studied by Isbister and Gray, more than 60% reported that the person had been bitten by spiders that had got into clothing, towels or beds. Clinical toxicologist Geoffrey Isbister studied 130 cases of arachnologist-identified white-tailed spider bites, and found no necrosis or confirmed infections, concluding that