Animal communities, and particularly terrestrial carnivores, are considered to be strongly influenced by competitive interactions among coexisting species. Spiders are ubiquitous and important components of terrestrial ecosystems, but despite their interest, no studies have been published on the community structure and the resource use in the web-building spiders of southern Europe. We studied species abundance, seasonal occurrence and habitat use by the web-building spiders of a hedgerow biotope over two years. The spider community was composed of 17 species. Web size and position differed among species and life stages. For most species we observed a higher vegetation density towards the background of the web; this may decrease the ability of insects to see and avoid it. We observed differences among all the spider species in many habitat parameters (horizontal distribution, vertical stratification, density of vegetation around webs), and marked differences in seasonal occurrence. The segregation among species was greater in seasonal occurrence (overlap = 0.18-0.19) than in horizontal distribution (overlap = 0.67) and than in vertical stratification within the vegetation (overlap = 0.64). These differences may help species coexistence.