Spiders (Araneae) useful for pest limitation and bioindication

Local and Landscape Correlates of Spider Activity Density and Species Richness in Urban Gardens

“…Differences in prey preference, hunting methods, and timing of predation are complementary and allow for effective pest control (Sunderland and Samu 2000). Different spider species utilize a variety of hunting techniques, including ambush or sitand-wait, nocturnal or diurnal wandering, and web spinning (Marc et al 1999, Riechert 1999. Several European, Asian, and American studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of using spiders as biological control agents as an alternative to high pesticide use (Mansour et al 1980, Riechert and Lockley 1984, Nyffeler and Benz 1987, Nyffeler 2000.…”

Spiders as biological controllers in the agroecosystem

“…They substantiate the theoretical result that the system can be made pest-free by a decrease in the death rate of the wanderer spiders. On the other hand external influences like sudden weather instabilities may alter the ecosystem populations, increasing death rates of spider populations, [10,14]. Also the wind-induced migration of the newborns plays a relevant role for the coexistence of all the species in the ecosystem.…”

“…Ballooning can be performed over long or short distances, from a few meters to several hundreds kilometers. It could be supposed that perturbations in agroecosystems should induce ballooning, [14]. Weymann et al [23] confirmed that severe stress can increase ballooning to very high levels.…”

Effects of kaolin particle films on the life span of an orb-weaver spider

“…Concerning spiders, Sackett et al (2007), Marko et al (2010) and Pascual et al (2010) observed a reduction of density of spiders in crop fields. Spiders are generalist predators with important predatory action in agroecosystems and ability to reduce the populations of various insect pests (Marc et al, 1999;Nyffeler and Sunderland, 2003;Riechert and Lockley, 1984).…”

“…Thus, the objective of this work was to assess the effect of kaolin solution applications on the life span of Araniella cucurbitina (Clerck) (Araneae: Araneidae) under laboratory conditions and considering different exposure routes. A. curcubitina was selected in this study as test organism because it is an orb-web building spider species, commonly found in several agro-forest ecosystems throughout Europe and Asia where it is considered as being an effective biological control agent of several pests such as Diptera, Lepidoptera and winged aphids (Marc and Canard, 1997;Marc et al, 1999;Isaia et al, 2006;Cardoso et al, 2008;Pascual et al, 2014).…”